15 for Frayser

These 15 people won’t determine the future of Frayser and its more than 40,000 residents.

But there aren’t 15 people in the world who are working harder for Frayser’s future, who care more, or who ultimately will have more of an impact on the beleaguered Memphis neighborhood.

Each person here represents a key aspect of an unprecedented effort to revitalize Frayser. Each person also represents countless others who are working with them to address Frayser’s social, economic and xx challenges.

“What gives me hope for Frayser is to see all of the people who have stayed loyal to Frayser,” said Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell.

“When we’re looking for ways to help a given community, we start by looking within the community for people who care deeply about that community and are willing to fight for it. Frayser is blessed to have a lot of them.”

The Ex-Offender

DeAndre Brown is preaching to the choir.

“I’m a convicted felon, just like you,” Brown tells a dozen African-American men and two women seated inside what used to be a white Presbyterian Church across from Frayser High School. “Every day we do the right thing, we prove them wrong.”

Brown, 38, found God in prison, where he spent about two years of his life for bank fraud in the early 2000s. Now he’s pastor of Lifeline to Success, a Frayser church and ministry for fellow ex-offenders. It’s not a jobs program. It’s a character rebuilding program.

“You made bad decisions. Now you have to start making good ones,” the transformed Brown tells the men and women, most of them wearing the lime-green Blight Patrol T-shirts that have become a symbol of Frayser’s efforts to transform itself.

Brown and his wife, Vinessa, founded their ministry two years ago after their commercial cleaning business lost a big contract when the company learned of Brown’s criminal record. At first, their new ministry didn’t pay the bills. A year ago, the Browns and their six children moved into a cheap motel, then into a homeless shelter.

“It wasn’t easy, but it made our marriage and our ministry stronger and wiser,” Vinessa Brown said.

Lifeline to Success is stronger than ever. The congregation is growing. The Blight Patrol has a contract with the city to clean vacant, overgrown lots. Brown is a co-convener of the Frayser Steering Committee — charged with charting a course that will turn the neighborhood around.

“We wake up, worship and work in Frayser,” Brown said. “Our purpose is to transform Frayser.”

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The Redeveloper

Steve Lockwood is buying houses as fast as he can.

In Frayser. A neighborhood where property values have declined by more than half since the mid-2000s. A neighborhood devastated by subprime mortgages and predatory lenders. A neighborhood that led the state in foreclosures each year of the past decade.

“There isn’t a street on Frayser that doesn’t have at least one boarded-up, burned-out  or torn down house,” says Lockwood, 63, executive director of the Frayser Community Development Corporation. “But I don’t have the arsenal to deal with all of this … excuse my language. I’m just trying to keep the neighborhood from sinking.”

In the past few years, Lockwood’s CDC has been able to buy 99 foreclosed, abandoned or condemned homes in Frayser, thanks to a $3.7 million grant from the federal government’s Neighborhood Stabilization Program. He’s sold some, but he’s renting or leasing most of them.

In a community with nearly 3,000 empty homes, and thousands of homeowners underwater, injecting a few million dollars into housing isn’t enough.

“I could use $50 million,” says Lockwood, a co-convener of the Frayser Steering Committee, “but unfortunately, the NSP money is about to run out.”

Still, Lockwood, who led neighborhood renewals in Cooper-Young and VECA, believes Frayser can rebound.

“This neighborhood is aggressive, and it’s coming together at just the right time,” says Lockwood.

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The Chief

Michael Ellis is following orders.

The retired Navy Chief, who was honored as Sailor of the Year in 1996, is getting his orders from a higher command now.

“God wants us in Frayser. That’s why we’re here,” said Ellis, 52, the burley pastor of Impact Baptist Church, a Southern Baptist church that began as a Bellevue Baptist Church mission in 2000.

Ellis, a New Orleans native, began leading worship services six years ago in his house. There were 22 people. Now, the 1,000-member congregation meets in the old Georgian Hills Baptist Church, which Bellevue purchased for $800,000 in 2009.

Impact America Ministries offers GED and computer classes, a thrift store and a food pantry, children’s programs and a Baby Store, job training and jobs. It also owns the Jett College of Barbering on the east side of North Watkins.

Ellis, whose father is a pastor in Alabama, and who last month became the first African-American vice president of the Tennessee Baptist Convention, has become one of the leaders of the Frayser Exchange Club, the Frayser Community Association, and the Frayser Steering Committee.

“The brothers from Frayser know what needs to be done in Frayser,” Ellis said. “We’re already doing it.”

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The Commuter

Dr. Bill Byrne is driving.

Driving from his home in Pocahontas, Tenn., to Frayser, a 170-mile round-trip trek he has taken several times a week for more than 20 years, since he retired from the UT Center for Health Sciences.

“It’s crazy, I know,” says Dr. Byrne, 85. “Frayser has become a part of me. I can’t explain it. I’m just trying to give the community some roots.”

Dr. Byrne — everyone in Frayser calls him Dr. Byrne — began rooting himself in Frayser by helping elementary students with their math skills. Today, Tennessee Mentorship works with dozens of young men, matching them with older male models and providing stipends for job training and community service.

Along the way, Dr. Byrne has found time to help start the Frayser Community Association, the Frayser Community Development Corporation, the Frayser Interfaith Association, and the Frayser Police Joint Agency.

“City services, such as police, sanitation, code enforcement and parks services have targeted Frayser because of his efforts,” read an Aug. 21 City Council resolution that turned a part of James Road into Dr. William Byrne Avenue.

“Long ago, when I worked at Duke University, I’d get up every morning saying I’m going to cure cancer today,” Dr. Byrne says.

“When I worked at UT, I’d get up every morning thinking about how I was going to repair the human brain. Now I get up every morning thinking that I’m going to save Frayser. It’s just the way I think.”

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The Salesman

Charlie Caswell is hustling.

He spent the morning speaking to a Leadership Memphis group and giving them a tour of Frayser. He’s trying to keep an eye on the parenting class and the Baby Store across the hall. He’s got to meet with the people from the Mayor’s office as well as the folks from Washington. And he’s got to pick up his daughters soon.

“It’s busy but that’s good,” said Caswell, 37, the lanky full-time director of the Rangeline Community Development Corporation, part-time minister at Union Grove Baptist Church, member of the Frayser Steering Committee, and married father of twin girls. “It’s good that Frayser is getting all of this attention. It used to be bad, but now it’s good,”

Caswell, the second youngest of 17 children, grew up in Dixie Homes. He tells people he was saved from a life of crime by a tough, no-nonsense neighbor named Toney Armstrong, now the city’s police director. “Toney whooped me a couple times,” Caswell… “I didn’t like it but it’s what I needed. I don’t have a felony because of Toney. He told me to stop hanging out on the corner.”

Caswell dropped out of Northside High at age 17. He washed cars in sales lot. Then he sold cars. Then he ran his own used-car lot. “I went from hearing, ‘Boy, go wash my car,’ to saying, ‘Boy, go sell my car.’”

Now, he’s selling Frayser while coordinating a wide variety of programs to improve the health, welfare, job prospects and living conditions of its residents.

“Frayser is a diamond in the rough,” Caswell says. “We’ve got a golf course, an airport, lakes and hills. My wife and I live by a lake. How many people can say that?”

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The Civic Leader

Shelly Rice is keeping the tradition alive.

“We’d better get started, we’ve got a lot to cover,” Rice, 62, president of the Frayser Exchange Club, says as he gavels the meeting to order at Sarah Lee’s Kitchen, a restaurant on North Watkins. “There’s so much happening in Frayser these days, it’s hard to fit it all in.”

It’s getting harder to fit all the people in week after week. Thanks to Rice and vice president Pat Anderson, the weekly gathering of the Frayser Exchance Club — the neighborhood’s last remaining social organization — has become Frayser’s Town Square.

Just a few years ago, the club’s regular get-togethers were lucky to draw half a dozen folks. Nowadays, 30, 40, sometimes 50 people squeeze into the restaurant’s chairs and corners to get the latest updates on schools, taxes, upcoming events and general developments.

Recent guests have included Luttrell, Congressman Steve Cohen, Dist. Atty. Gen. Amy Weirich, and County Commissioners Mike Ritz and Terry Roland (not on the same day, of course).

“I haven’t seen this much interest in Frayser since, well, I can’t remember how long it’s been,” said Rice, whose late father, Ed Rice, was a founder of the old Frayser Civic Club and owner of the Frayser Maid, a roadside ice cream parlor whose pink and yellow formica countertops became a neighborhood tradition.

“Frayser’s always had a lot of civic pride, despite the perceptions people have about it,” says Rice. “Negative perceptions about Frayser are tough to overcome, but it’s coming back. You can just feel it when you talk to people. They have more juice in their step. Good things are happening.”

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The Cross Bearer

Ricky Floyd is carrying a cross.

Literally lugging it through the streets of Frayser. Toting a nine-foot-tall, 40-pound wooden cross down Dellwood and Watkins and whatnot at least once a week.

“It definitely gets people’s attention. And it helps me lose weight,” the 45-year-old pastor says with a chuckle. Then he gets serious.

“It creates a consciousness of Jesus and the sacrifice that he made and convicts people of unrighteousness without ever saying anything.”

Floyd and his wife, Sheila, are co-pastors of Pursuit of God Church, which meets in the old Frayser-Trinity Presbyterian Church.

They do more than worship. Their ministry includes the School of Marriage Enhancement; Nowfit, which teaches the benefits of proper eating and exercise; and the School of Accelerated Prosperity, which offers weekly classes on budgeting, credit and debt.

Last month, the church hosted a public meeting for parents to learn more about the Achievement School District.

“We’re trying to break the spirit of poverty over this place,” says Floyd, whose single mother was 16 when he was born.

“Poverty isn’t just a spiritual matter. It’s also a practical matter. People can’t get out of poverty when they’re paying a predatory lender 26% interest on a used-car loan.”

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The Missionary

John McCall is on a mission.

The retired professor and third-generation Frayser lover has big plans for the summer home his grandfather built in 1920 on James Road near McLean.

The founder of ArkWings, a faith-based conference center

“A sanctuary in the heart of Memphis,” says McCall, 65, whose father, the late Judge John W. McCall, was founder of the old Baptist Brotherhood Commission, a lay organization devoted to missions.

That devotion runs in the family. John McCall III’s great-great grandfather was one of the first Baptist ministers in Tennessee. His uncle was president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. His sister, Carol Richardson, is associate pastor at First Baptist Church Memphis.

McCall’s lay ministry has sent hundreds of Frayser students on weeklong outdoor retreats to the American Southwest. They hike, climb, repel and canoe. They distribute medical supplies to Native Americans. McCall has also led student mission trips to work with orphans in African and Central America.

McCall and ArkWings also will be participating in the Mid-South Regional Greenprint & Sustainability Plan.

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The New Neighbor

Johnnie Hatten is living in Frayser.

That wasn’t the plan when the Hattiesburg, Miss., native moved to Cordova five years ago to work in social services. But after she started attending Frayser’s Bethel Church of God in Christ, she got involved in the community, first as a volunteer, then as a Vista worker at Frayser High.

That was when media reports claimed there were 90 pregnant girls at the school. Hatten knows it wasn’t true. Her parenting class at the time had 72 students, and that included boys and girls.

“I’m doing what God’s calling me to do, help these young ladies become good moms, help these babies have good moms,” says Hatten, 37, now a counselor for Agape Child and Family Services.

Earlier this year, Agape began working with Teen+, a federally-funded Shelby County program that offers pregnancy and parenting support for teens. Hatten is working with 15 Frayser teenagers and their extended families. She visits their homes once a week, encouraging them to stay healthy and continue their education, teaching them about prenatal care and child development, helping them connect to services and programs.

They aren’t just her cases. They are her neighbors.

“I just began to realize that to be effective in Frayser, I need to be here. Live here,” Hatten says.

“So that’s why I moved here. I don’t want to be some outsider coming in and giving advice. I need to live with people in their joy and pain, not to do for them but to do with them.”

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The Uncle

Joe Hunter is one-man welcoming committee.

Every weekday afternoon, “Uncle Joe” Hunter stands by the door of the North Frayser Community Center. He shakes each young person’s hand, looks each one in the eye and asks each one the same question: “How was your day?”

Hunter, 51, ex-gang member, ex-drug dealer, ex-road manager for Ray Charles, is executive director of a faith-based nonprofit he calls Gospel At New Generation — or G.A.N.G.

“I’m about the nicest gang member you’re ever gonna meet,” Hunter says. “I take kids the church doesn’t want. Frankly, I take kids the church can’t handle.”

Hunter, who grew up a street thug in Detroit, became a road manager for Ray Charles. He moved to Memphis in the late 1990s with his wife, Trudy Cohan, a Memphis native. She was a Raelette. Both got tired of traveling.

The young men and women who travel to the North Frayser Community Center every afternoon call Hunter “Uncle Joe.”

“Most of them don’t have a daddy, so I’m their uncle,” says Hunter, an ordained minister. “There’s no one around to tell them to go to bed, eat right, do your homework, No one around them is doing the right thing, so why should they?

“My job is to show them and tell them why they should.”

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The Educator

Bobby White is dreaming.

“If you can stabilize the schools, then you can stabilize the entire community,” said White, a 1990 Frayser High graduate, former Westside Middle School principal, current Achievement School District leader.

“You can address the transient nature of the population here, which leads to drugs and gangs and crime and blight. Then, if you can make these schools the kind parents want to get their kids into, not out of, you can make this a community people want to be in.”

White, who gained national attention for raising test scores and ‘sagging’ pants at Westside, joined the Achievement School District this year. Gov. Bill Haslam wants ASD to move the bottom 5 percent of state’s public schools to the top 25 percent in five years.

Sixty-nine of the 85 “failing” schools are in Memphis; 11 are in Frayser. ASD took control of three of them this year, including Westside. It has designs on several more, including White’s alma mater, Frayser High.

White is working closely with the Frayser Steering Committee to develop a long-range neighborhood improvement plan. He believes the plan won’t succeed without Frayser’s schools.

That’s why he’s working with ASD to establish Frayser Community Schools, a non-profit charter management organization that eventually would run all Frayser schools.

“This is our community and these are our schools,” White says. “Frayser Community Schools can be a beacon of light to the entire neighborhood.”

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The Coach

Marron Thomas is leading the practice.

The part-time football coach has led the Cougars of Georgian Hills Middle School to state championships in 2006 and 2011, and city championships in 2009, 2010 and 2011.

“Football is a great way to teach leadership skills, but it’s not the only way,” says Thomas, 38, whose full-time job is executive director of the Leadership Empowerment Center, a faith-based after-school program housed next door to the school in the old Georgian Hills United Methodist Church.

The center, formerly Youth Visions, started with 10 kids in 1995. Now it provides tutoring, sports, arts, technical and ledership programs for more than 300 youth in six Frayser schools.

It’s about a mile from the corner where Thomas got arrested nearly 20 years ago for selling drugs.

“I was a drug dealer,” Thomas says. “Jesus rehabilitated me. It’s just grace.”

After probation, Thomas went on to graduate from college and then seminary. He started working for Youth Visions in 1997 as a youth outreach specialist. Now he runs the program.

“A lot of these kids, they don’t see life outside of Frayser, they don’t see anything for them past the age of 25,” Thomas says. “But they want something different. They want someone to believe in them. Once that happens, then they start believing in themselves.”

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The Believer

Kenneth Douglas is studying.

That doesn’t seem unusual, considering the Lane College freshman was president of his senior class, chairman of his community’s youth council, and president of a neighborhood faith-based leadership team. But Douglas isn’t a typical college freshman.

He grew up in Frayser, a neighborhood known more for its failing schools, gangs and pregnant girls than its college kids. He is one of eight children born to a woman who had her first at age 14. His uncle was in a gang. One of his older brothers was in a gang and was recently shot four times and nearly killed.

“I had every reason in the world to give up,” Douglas, a 2012 Frayser High grad, said in a speech to the National Forum on Youth Violence Prevention in Washington last April.

“Seeing positive men like President Barack Obama, Mayor A.C Wharton and Marron Thomas lets me know I have every reason in the world to keep going. I am resilient.”

When Douglas was in middle school, another older brother, Marquino, got involved in a faith-based leadership development program at Youth Visions, now the Leadership Empowerment Center. A year or two later, Douglas joined him.

In August, Kenneth’s mother, Markeita Douglas, a 1992 Frayser High grad, dropped three of her children off at Lane College. Marquino is a sophomore; Kenneth and daughter Quintoria are freshmen.

When Markeita she got back home, she turned to her own studies at Southwest Tennessee Community College.

“I told her no way she’s graduating before me,”