Reflecting on the Rev. Sylvester Roberts: ‘I just love people’

As 2016 ends, it marks almost 31 years that I have written freelance for The Sun News.

Near time for the calendar to change, I always look back and remember the thousands of people who have shared their stories with me and allowed me to present them to readers.

Many of them are gone now, men like the the Rev. Sylvester Roberts, who became my friend and a comforter to my family soon after I moved from Florida to be with my mother and my dying father.

It wasn’t long before The Rev. Roberts and I realized our birthdays were close, so we celebrated together a couple of years at his Cool Springs area home with his wife, Myrtle – whose cooking was something to behold-- and his singing family that kept his toes tapping.

The Rev. Roberts, who was black, was loved and respected by people of all colors, and he loved and respected everyone. I asked him once, considering the times he grew up in, how it was that he came to love black and white people the same.

His answer will never leave me. “I just love people,” he said. “I can’t love some and hate some and be Christ-like. When it comes to right and righteous, everybody looks alike. God made ‘em, and I’d be afraid to grade ‘em,”

The answer settles quickly into the head of a person like me who grew up on a farm and had to help “grade” tobacco leaves before it went to market –tying it and piling it together in several piles ranging from tips to lugs. Every different pile brought a different price because some leaves were worth more than others.

He and Myrtle were some of my father’s most faithful visitors. She would sing in her sweet voice, and he would tap his foot. Then he would pray.

I wish I could hear him pray again.

In 1991, I finally did write about the Rev. Roberts for The Sun News, and I talked with several people who credited his prayers with saving their lives.

The Rev. Roberts never went to school or learned to read and write, but he could quote most any part of the Bible, and he spoke of the disciples as if they were his old friends. “The Lord says he can take the foolish and convince the wise,” he said. “Who he chooses, he qualifies. Peter and John were unlearned men, but they had been with Jesus, and the Lord had fixed them up and they could do the jobs.”

The Rev. Roberts and Myrtle visited the sick and brought light to the darkness. Whether he was praying or preaching in somebody’s home or in the chapel at the old prison camp, he was showing his love to people, regardless of who they were or what they had done.

“That’s what it’s all about, like Christ, being concerned about people. If you want somebody to be good to you, be good to somebody,” he said.

He was shining then, as his memory still shines for me today.

What kind of world would we have if everybody thought the way The Rev. Roberts did?

I wish you Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Holidays or whatever the next few days bring to you.

This story was originally published December 22, 2016 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Reflecting on the Rev. Sylvester Roberts: ‘I just love people’."