Saving the Streets of Chicago

By But God, His Story in the lives of Reverend Roosevelt and Mary Matthews

This is the story of Reverend Roosevelt Matthews and his beloved wife, Mary, whose work saved many in one of the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods on Chicago's West Side. But as Roosevelt emphasizes, it's not his story but God's story. In 1952, Roosevelt and Mary came to Chicago from Rolling Fork, Mississippi, as part of the Great Migration of six million Southern Blacks. Shortly after they married, Mary became a sixth-grade Chicago Public School teacher at Faraday Elementary where she taught for thirty years. With his teaching degree and certificate in hand, Roosevelt headed out to the Chicago Board of Education to be assigned the school he would teach in. But God had other ideas. As he walked down his front steps, he saw troubled youth in the street where gangs and drugs were prevalent. He suddenly came to an abrupt halt; struck with the Lord's call to help these young people. Forging a career as a schoolteacher, Roosevelt founded the Albany Youth Center and Albany Baptist Church, which he and Mary ran for the next forty-five years. As one youth center attendee stated, "The gangs in the area did not bother the kids who attended the youth center. They respected the efforts of Reverend Matthews and his wife to make the life of those kids better." With the violence and racism in our country today, the work of Roosevelt and Mary is a big part of the solution. This book documents the "But God" moments where the Lord provided their needs:

But God, when Roosevelt went to buy a defunct factory as a place to put his youth center's outdoor basketball court, the owner looked him in the face and said, "I'd rather burn the factory down than sell it to an N-word". A few months later, Dr. King was assassinated and in the resulting riots the factory was burned to the ground. The factory then became property of the City of Chicago and sold to Roosevelt for a much lower price.

But God, teaching Interracial friendship by living in each other's homes, Roosevelt established the Friendship Outreach program between white churches and Albany Baptist Church in 1972. White children came to live with Black families on Chicago's West Side and vice versa. In 2018, one of the original exchange students from Minnesota returned to Albany Church with her own children, continuing this wonderful long-term friendship.

But God, Mary got the smooth transition she prayed for after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She never suffered from the ravages of the disease. Looking as beautiful as ever, she played piano in church just three days before she passed from her beloved Roosevelt's loving arms to God's kingdom.

But God, as Roosevelt said, "The Lord directed such fine people to help us along the way". One was "Mother" Vera Stephens, who taught Roosevelt and Mary child evangelism. Vera later felt the call to go to Liberia, where she established the Bethesda Christian Mission School that is still inspiring the lives of many children today. In 2011, "Mother" Stephens was posthumously honored for her work by both the president and vice president of Liberia.

But God, while Mary and Roosevelt were not able to have biological children, many former pupils, attributing much of their success to "Mom" and "Dad," still call, send letters, and emails. Several have become Bible teachers and ministers themselves while others include a college president and a corporate executive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9798888320242

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Saving the Streets of Chicago

But God, His Story in the lives of Reverend Roosevelt and Mary Matthews

ISBN 979-8-88832-023-5 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88832-024-2 (digital)

Copyright © 2023 by But God, His Story in the lives of Reverend Roosevelt and Mary Matthews as told by Robert Burrows

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Additional pictures for chapters of the book can be found by scanning the QR code below. More images will be uploaded frequently.

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Preface

Prologue

But God, Mary's Smooth Transition

But God, a flower blooms in the South—Mary's early life

But God, Mary's high school and beyond

But God, she touched her students

From Darlene Ashford Jackson

From Darlene's brother, Kevin Ashford Sr.

From Barbara Thorton

Greg Watson

Fawn Funderburg

My Early Days

High school

Marines

Our Early Life Together

First year of marriage

Back to School

I enter pastor training

We meet Vera Stephens

Good News Club

Mary at the new house

Mary starts teaching at Faraday

But God, missionaries—children ministry

But God, missionaries—a bigger home for our ministry

But God, Our Own Youth Center

An indoor youth center

We meet Dr. King

Full-Time Youth Minister

We Move to Carol Stream

But God, how you care for your children

Tyrone's family

Dr. Marlon Hall

Walter and the Paddle

Beth and her children

Friendship Outreach Program

Albany Baptist Church Founded

Other Children and Grandchildren

But God intervened

Story of the boy on the train

Augusta

Albert Johnson

But God, a Succession Plan

I Speak to Mary's Class about Overcoming Your Environment

Otis Needs a Gym

But God, we start exercising

Pastor Whitcomb and Family

God's Funding

Secret of a Good Marriage

But God, Our Golden Anniversary

Car hobby

But God, the Places We Traveled to and Danced Together

But God, Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself

Youth Center Kids Grown Up

Police

A Computer Donation without Incident

A Special Song

Braided Hair

Epilogue

Anecdotes and Prayers

Humility and help

The mountain bike

Thanksgiving at Albany Church and Youth Center

Final stories and thoughts

About the Author

But God, His Story in the lives of Reverend Roosevelt and Mary Matthews as told by Robert Burrows

Preface

September 12, 2022

Around 1987, as a member of the pump-at-lunch bunch, I would bring a sack lunch to work each day to be eaten at my desk after a forty-five-minute workout at the health club next to my office. One day, while grunting through bench presses, I overheard a conversation on the machine next to me.

I've heard now they have computers that can find verses in the Bible that pertain to a particular sermon. I could certainly use that in preparing my sermons, the man said. But, he added, I know nothing about computers and wish I could find someone to help me set one up.

Finishing my last rep, I turned and saw before me a man who looked quite a bit older than his twenty-something muscular body.

Being very busy at work and with my wife about to have our third child, I didn't know why at the time, but I turned to him without hesitation and said, I can help you.

This is a story about this man, the Reverend Roosevelt Matthews, and his wife, Mary, who came north from Mississippi in the Great Migration to change the lives and bring hope to so many in their Chicago West Side neighborhood of West Garfield Park, one of the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods in Chicago. A recent Internet search showed the neighborhood is the second poorest and eighth most dangerous. Through the Albany Youth Center and the church that they founded, Roosevelt and Mary provided a path through Chicago City gangs, drugs, poverty, and lack of opportunity. It is a story of love and compassion. But as the reader will see, it is not their story but God's. It is His story. For as Roosevelt and Mary tell it, the Lord provided them all the inspiration, strength, miracles, funding, and most of all the people they needed to carry out their call for His glory.

For the past thirty-five years, I updated Roosevelt and Mary's computer to newer models and installed Bible software. I felt His story of their lives was so amazing that it needed to be told. As I often tell everyone, if only there were more Roosevelts and Marys in this world, the widespread violence would be greatly reduced or perhaps even eradicated. What follows is His story of their lives as told to me by Roosevelt as I keyed it into the computer. Much of the material, too, comes from the daily journals that Mary kept. I have taken the keying-in-the-story liberty to add some comments of events that occurred during our friendship and the five years of writing this book that Roosevelt and Mary, as humble servants of the Lord, might not have mentioned.

Roosevelt and Mary have also had a major impact on my life. Being Jewish, I spend holidays in temple with my wonderful mother who is now ninety-three. But in spending time with Roosevelt and Mary, I have witnessed the miraculous power of their Christian beliefs and now consider myself a member of two faiths and have belonged to First Congregational Church of Glen Ellyn for the past twenty-five years

Thanks to all Mary's former students' and the Albany Youth Center and Church members' contributions that tell this story. Your emails and phone calls are appreciated far more than you know.

Thanks also to my good friend Dave Atkinson, who spent countless hours helping me to edit this book and correct my grammar. He learned well from his mother, Shirley, who was an English teacher.

Thanks to my sister Linda Burrows, who, in addition to correcting grammar, made several invaluable suggestions on the content. Her first novel is to be published soon.

A special thanks to Christian Faith Publishing, our publisher who believed in Roosevelt and Mary's work and story.

Finally thanks much to you, the reader, for purchasing this book as all profits will go to supporting the Albany Church and Youth Center and their West Side community for hopefully all eternity.

Prologue

June 5, 2017. Bob, it took a lot for you to come tonight. I am so glad for you and your assistance. Bob, today a good friend put a song on my phone, and that song means so much to me. It's Crying in the Chapel. That was Mary's favorite song when we were first dating. Later in the day, I received a call from another friend who asked about the story of Mary and me, including our mission work and the Albany Youth Center and the church we started. She wants to read it; therefore, I must start writing it and getting it all together. Throughout her life, Mary kept journals, documenting our work and life together that told much of this story. But God, what a story He gave us and the kids on Chicago's West Side.

But God, Mary's Smooth Transition

When my wife, Mary, saw the Bible, she was so elated that, forgetting her cancer, she literally jumped up from the couch. Standing straight as a rail, she split the book open to almost the exact page of one of her favorite verses and started reading it to us with the fervor of a Sunday-morning preacher.

The book was a gift from our friends Bob and Carrie Burrows, who had arrived at 7:30 p.m. that evening to pay us, as they said, a short visit. The women's Bible accompanied a second gift of candy made by Bob's sister, Deana, a pastry chef. The verse was Luke 18:35, telling the story of Jesus going to Jericho and restoring a blind man's sight.

Still standing, Mary completed the verse and then discussed with us the power that her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ had in her life. She told us she had cherished this verse since she had heard it in a sermon during the mid-1950s, when she was in her twenties.

Finally sitting back down, Mary started munching on the candy and asked Bob and Carrie about their recent vacation trips and the well-being of their family. Then in response to questions, she touched on her dealings with the stage 4 ovarian cancer that she was diagnosed with four months prior. She also mentioned all the wonderful friends and family that had come to visit her in the preceding months.

But God, Mary did not experience cancer the way most people do. She looked just as beautiful as she always did, with no sign of the ravages to the body so common with the disease. The only evidence of the cancer was that her stomach was a bit distended and she had a slight pain in her hip, alleviated when I rubbed it down with 70 percent wintergreen alcohol. She was never bedridden. Up until this day, Mary and I lived much as we had done our whole lives.

While we used to have a daily morning run, now fourscore in age, this morning, we had taken our daily mile walk on which we discussed Bible verses. We had worked a bit in the garden after our walk and had eaten White Castle hamburgers for lunch.

The only pause in our routine that I remember was one morning a few weeks before this day.

During our daily walk, Mary said, Let's rest a bit. Then a moment later, she said, Let's go.

Around this day of the short pause was another unusual event or, as I look back, another But God moment.

Mary woke me up in the middle of the night to say, Ro—as she called me—I sense a third person in this room. Do you feel that?

I had a feeling of awe, an overwhelming sense of something unreal, and I replied, Yes, I do feel it.

Around 9:00 p.m., Mary was still going strong.

Carrie leaned over and whispered to Bob, I think Mary is getting tired and we should go.

Bob replied, Does she look tired? I think she is enjoying our conversation. Let's stay a bit more.

Still full of vigor, Mary then started talking about how she felt her cancer doctors weren't giving her a full explanation of her disease. Bob, having had cancer himself, said he would contact his doctor so Mary could consult with her. Then Bob reached in his wallet and gave Mary his lucky $2 bill, a good luck gift from his Greek neighbor given on New Year's Day some thirty years before. Mary was even more excited and could not thank Bob enough and put the bill in as a place mark for the verse in Luke she had just read.

After more conversation about everyday life and family, at around 11:45 p.m., Mary paused for a minute; and our visitors said their goodbyes. After Bob and Carrie left, Mary and I talked for an hour longer into the wee hours of the next morning, reflecting on the joy of their visit with us and things of the Lord. Mary, finally exhausted, fell asleep on the couch; and I went to sleep in our bedroom.

At around 6:00 a.m., I awoke to Mary calling my name.

Ro, help me to the washroom, she said.

I started to take her.

Just by the door, she said in her normal and calm voice, Ro, I am dying.

I said, No, you're not.

Then she said, Ro, I'm leaving you.

Peacefully, while in my arms, she then closed her eyes for the last time, absent from the body but present with the Lord.

In the years since, I have been reflecting on the meaning of these unbelievable last few minutes God gave us together. What I have come to understand is that, as Mary was in my arms, looking into my eyes and saying her final words Ro, I'm leaving you, God was giving me, the person she loved deeply and who loved her just as deeply, a profound understanding of what being absent from the body and present with the Lord means. But God, our final moments together will provide me a lasting comfort until it is my time and I am with her again in glory.

Based on Romans 14:8, If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's, by passing in my arms, Mary had told me she was just fine.

Mary went to be with the Lord on June 19, 2014 at 6:30 a.m. She was never in the hospital a day in all her eighty years until diagnosed with ovarian cancer in March of 2014. I stayed with Mary for four days in the hospital, sleeping in a reclining chair by her bed while she underwent tests, which determined the diagnosis.

At her funeral, my next-door neighbor for the past twenty years, Cesar, who is a chef, told me that same evening before she passed that Mary was out in the backyard when he returned home from work. He said she heard his car pulling into the driveway and came over and told him, Cesar, our dear friend and good neighbor, I am dying. Please take care of Roosevelt for me.

I couldn't believe it, Cesar said. She looked just fine.

About five months after her passing, shortly after what would have been her eighty-first birthday, I made an amazing discovery. After midnight on the night before she passed and after I had gone to sleep, Mary, like she always did, journaled about the day and the Burrowses' visit and gifts they had given her, especially the women's Bible. She ended her last journal entry with The Lord gave me a terrific Word to represent Him and give glory to Him.

Mary had known it was her time. I found other journal entries such as one where she praised the Lord for giving her eighty years of life, sixty years of marriage, and thirty years as a teacher. She wrote:

With my Lord and Savior and because of His love for me, I have experienced some extraordinary joys and advantages in my life. The most amazing joy was God's gift and choice of a mate for me, the love of my life, Roosevelt Matthews of Rolling Fork, Mississippi, my soulmate. The best of life came to me because he was God's choice from the start! Our love story is long and filled with intrigue and the wonder of how and what God has done for us! As the years have advanced, we filled the moments with His great love that He has given us for Him and for one another. Roosevelt Matthews is the loving husband that God Almighty prepared and gave to me! I am forever grateful. To God be the glory. Great things He has done.

I have discovered the greatest treasure in this life has been to walk with my Lord and Savior day by day. He has made my life complete and joy filled.

That [I] may walk worthy of the Lord in all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. (Colossians 1:10)

I am a life that is saved! Thank you, my Lord!

Thanks be to God for my gift of being an educator. I chose a career in teaching with the Chicago Public Schools system and served children for thirty wonderful years! This has been a great challenge and a most rewarding experience for me. I have received several awards and acknowledgments for exemplary teaching and service to the students, including being listed in the Who's Who among American Teachers, 1990 edition. More importantly, I have maintained long-standing relationships over the years with several of my students, a true testament to my love and passion for teaching. I am also grateful to God for the gift of learning and obtaining knowledge which enabled me to teach. Additionally, I was blessed to serve my Albany Baptist Church family as superintendent of the Sunday school and minister of music for many years.

There will be an everlasting void in the hearts and lives of so many wonderful people whom I have met and known in my lifetime. This includes my total biological family, my remaining siblings LaRuth Bush of Chicago, Illinois, and Reverend Cedell Bush Sr. (Anne) of Los Angeles, California; sister-in-law Bessie Bush of Clinton, Mississippi; brother-in-law Kirk Tolliver of Woodridge, Illinois; many nieces; nephews; cousins; and a host of friends, as well as the Albany Baptist Church family. Last but certainly not least, a special tribute to my darling husband of sixty beautiful years. Our marriage was made and ordained of God in heaven! Need I say more? I praise you, my Lord! To God be the glory. Great things He has done!

If you have any question about the power of the God and His Son, Jesus, the story of Mary's smooth transition will erase all doubt. Mary did pray for a gentle ending to her life. About two months before her passing, Mary journaled, on April 15, 2014, Making a smooth transition from earth to heaven. Next to this, she wrote Having faith in Jesus Christ. Then she quoted Matthew 21:21–22 and Luke 17:6.

Matthew 21:21 talks about the power of faith to remove and destroy obstacles in your path.

The Bible relates this verse:

Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree [which, in Matthew 21:18–20,