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Final sermon
The Rev. Grady Williams stepping down as pastor of Trinity Baptist Church
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
The Rev. Grady Williams, 83, who will give his last sermon Sunday as pastor of Trinity Baptist Church, remembers March 15, 1948, like it was yesterday.
He was 20 years old, arriving in Youngstown on a Greyhound bus from Montgomery, Ala., where he had grown up on his father’s peanut farm.
“Federal Street was like Main Street in New York City,” the Rev. Mr. Williams remembers. “Everybody was in downtown Youngstown on payday.”
He had come to Youngstown to work in the steel mill with an uncle, and within a few months, Mr. Williams had started working at U.S. Steel as a repairman.
His job was to repair the tracks carrying cars between the blast furnace and the open hearth, a job he would keep for 14 years.
Like peanut farming in the Deep South, Williams found the work to be difficult — “hot, dirty and heavy,” he recalls.
He began to dream of going into business for himself as owner of a fleet of construction vehicles.
But God had other plans.
“It was in the open hearth of the steel mill that the Lord spoke to me to leave the mill and become actively involved in ministry,” Mr. Williams recalls.
In 1963, after attending Bible school in Cleveland, Mr. Williams received his first assignment, senior pastor at Trinity Baptist Church on Highland Avenue in Warren, just southwest of downtown Warren.
Trinity Baptist had been formed only two years earlier by the Rev. Dr. John H. Wright and had 37 active members. The Rev. Dr. Wright died of a heart attack soon after Mr. Williams arrived, leaving 37-year-old Pastor Williams in charge.
Highland Avenue was a tree-lined street full of nice homes.
“Over the years, many of the people who occupied the houses have passed on or moved,” Mr. Williams said. “As a result, parts of Highland Avenue have become blighted.”
But during the 46 years he has served Trinity Baptist, he has done his best to help the neighborhood, especially during the urban- renewal period in the 1970s, when liquor establishments were being moved out of the Flats just south of downtown.
“The plan was to set up on Highland Avenue,” Mr. Williams said of the liquor businesses.
But he was part of a group that protested the idea, eventually leading to a successful ballot issue that voted Highland Avenue dry.
“And I still consider Highland Avenue a reasonably safe place to live,” he said.
Mr. Williams thought about leaving Trinity Baptist once after a few years in Warren but decided, “This is the place for me,” and has enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship with the church membership.
“It was the best choice I’ve ever made, because I think the greatest experience any religious leader can have is to see the fruits of his labor in the lives of his people — when you can see lifestyles change, when you can see spiritual growth and development,” he said.
Genevieve Taylor of Warren, the church secretary and a church member since 1986, said Mr. Williams “has been a friend. We could always depend on him, and he’s been right by my side.”
Mr. Williams and his wife, Nannie, plan to spend some time on vacation when he completes his last week on the job and reconnect with relatives.