wfn.org | Soup kitchen regular at Memphis church fatally stabbed

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

June 28, 1999    News media contact: Tom McAnally*(615)742-5470*Nashville,
Tenn.  10-71B{354}

By Cathy Farmer*

JACKSON, Tenn. (UMNS)  -- The quiet, friendly man who was stabbed to death
outside Union Avenue United Methodist Church in mid-town Memphis June 23 was
a familiar figure to the men and women who volunteer in the church's soup
kitchen. 

Sylvester Hayes, 46, a soup kitchen regular, showed up most days at lunch
time and was one of the few who accepted the church's invitation to join
them for singing and Bible study on Wednesday nights.

"Sylvester was part of our soup kitchen family," said the Rev. Richard
Pinkston Jr., Union Avenue pastor. "He helped us  clean up by bringing trays
back to the kitchen and, if a little tussle broke out, he always told the
people to stop because 'these folks do this because they're concerned about
us.' He had a real sense of what a struggling mid-town church was dealing
with."

^From all accounts, the trouble that ended in Sylvester's death began
somewhere else. 

"This fellow who had been in a ruckus with Sylvester showed up,"  Pinkston
said. "From what I'm told, everyone thought he was kidding at first, but the
argument escalated and spilled outside to the parking lot. That's where he
stabbed Sylvester repeatedly."

Carolyn Hall, who started the soup kitchen a year and a half ago with her
sister Nancy Simpson and then pastor Jim Glass, said, "I was at the stove,
dishing up red beans and rice, when someone yelled that there was a fight
out there. Melvin Tucker, our custodian, went to see about it."

By the time police and an ambulance could be summoned, Sylvester was dead
from multiple stab wounds.

Pinkston, who wasn't at the church and was unaware of the tragedy that had
just occurred, arrived in time to be alarmed by blue lights and police cars
filling the parking lot.

"They haven't caught the assailant yet," he said, "though he's been sighted
a time or two in the neighborhood. He seems to know all the nooks and
crannies to hide in." Union Avenue, which has an average weekly worship
attendance of 65,  is near Overton Park, a large city park and golf course
said to be used by street people at night for what little shelter they can
find.

"These are hard living people," Pinkston said, describing the racially mixed
group of 25 who come to the church for lunch on a fairly regular basis.
"Down on their luck, they just do what they can to make it day to day. I
wouldn't call them threatening. Many are very frail.  The food we serve them
at lunch on weekdays may be the only real meal they have that day."

Nancy Simpson said that many of their regulars were afraid that the church
would stop serving lunch. "Some were pretty concerned," she said.

"They don't need to worry," Pinkston said, adding that he had spoken to a
number of their regulars and told them the soup kitchen would stay open.
"The people who work here are very committed. They won't even entertain the
notion that we should stop."

"We'll keep on!" said Hall, almost fiercely. "I'm not afraid. I'll keep on
because there's such a need here in mid-town. Working at this soup kitchen
makes me feel like I'm doing something worthwhile. It means a lot to me.
We've helped with more than food. We've helped people find jobs, we buy them
shoes, we send them to doctors when they're sick. One man, a Navy
veteran, I sent to the VA hospital. He said I'd saved his life. Turned out
he had high blood pressure and was diabetic.

"No, we won't stop helping the people here," she said. "It makes life worth
living."
# # #
*Farmer is director of communications for the Memphis Conference of the
United Methodist Church. 

______________
United Methodist News Service
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