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Residents unite in mourning and prayer
Thursday, March 02, 2000 By Dennis B. Roddy, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Tom Connors, a man unaccustomed to the pulpit and still getting used to his own survival, clutched his son for dear life as he stood in front of 40 worshippers last night at the Christian Church of Wilkinsburg.
Like the others, Connors had come to pray for Joseph Healy, who preached from that spot often enough that Janet Hellner-Burris, the Disciples of Christ minister who presides there, called him "my Catholic assistant minister."
Connors had come to pray, too, for four other men shot when Ronald Taylor went on a rampage that began over a broken apartment door, descended into racial anger, and ended with two dead, including Healy.
When Taylor's fifth-floor apartment went up in flames and he walked outside to begin shooting white people, Connors was across the street, outside a local food bank. He was the only white man in the line yesterday morning.
"I know Ronnie Taylor," Connors said. "I could tell he was angry about something."
But Taylor simply looked at Connors and walked on. Why he did that is a mystery. Certainly he saw him, Connors said.
Connors remembered Taylor for his unremarkable nature. Nothing about him stood out until yesterday, when Taylor shot a white maintenance worker at his apartment on Wood Street, then walked through Wilkinsburg, shooting.
"I thank God that he didn't want me today," Connors told the mourners. He gave his boy, Douglas, a squeeze. "I'm raisin' him, but I'm not done yet."
The congregation last night was the human alloy that is Wilkinsburg, a struggling little town at Pittsburgh's eastern edge, still fighting its way back from the recession of 20 years ago. It has endured gang violence -- mostly black-on-black -- and the assorted troubles that come with poverty.
Until yesterday, though, racial anger hadn't really played a large part in the town's troubles. Nor did they seem present last night as hurting residents gathered to pray over the day's events.
Moments before services commenced, a black man, Greg Ferrell, manned the front door and walked into the cold to escort a group of white women inside.
He stood at the door and a white woman, Hope Ward, fell into his arms and wept.
"I just can't believe it. I can't believe about Healy," she said. Ferrell cradled her in his arms.
"I know. I know," he whispered.
People went inside for the service and began by singing "Kumbaya," a folk song. Healy, in his days as a priest, would have known it as "Be With Us."
Someone's praying, Lord,
Kumbaya....
They sang it, with Hellner-Burris calling out each new verse.
Someone's crying, Lord
Kumbaya ...
Ministers said and did the things ministers say and do.
Hellner-Burris spoke about the pain: "We are here because we are wounded and we are hurting."
The Rev. Michael Golphin of Deliverance Baptist Church asked people to join hands and pray together, "asking the Lord God that there be no retaliation for the things that have happened today."
The Rev. Diane Shepard of St. Stephen's Episcopal opened her prayer with what suddenly seemed like a universal truth: "Oh dear God, we don't even love ourselves ..."
It remained for Connors, a guy without a job, raising a fifth-grader on his own, to ask for what had to be the hardest of prayers.
"Let's pray for everyone, including Ronald Taylor," Connors said. "He's one of God's children, too."
They said the prayer. Then everyone lit candles and walked into a night in which the only color came from small candles that flickered bravely against a hopeless wind.
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