Reverend carries on his late son’s charity dreams
Asthe Rev. Glenn Grayson looks back at the decadelong “journey without Jeron,” he recalls some of the final words of his son.
Jeron X. Grayson had just survived a serious auto accident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in October 2010 on a weekend trip home to Pittsburgh from college.
“He came home and said, ‘I’m gonna take CARES global and to another level,’” said Rev. Grayson, founder of the social service organization Center that CARES. “I couldn’t understand what that meant. Thirty-six hours later, he was gone. I can’t believe 10 years have come and gone.”
Jeron had survived the accident only to be killed that same weekend on Oct. 17, 2010. He was attending a party near the California
University of Pennsylvania campus when he was struck by a bullet from a recklessly firing gunman he had never met. Jeron was 18.
Rev. Grayson recalled his son’s words on a recent afternoon in his office at the Hill District community center named for his late son, where visitors are greeted with large photos showing Jeron in his Schenley High School graduation cap and gown and in the uniform of Schenley’s City League champion football team — photos featuring a winsome smile as bright as his future seemed.
For Rev. Grayson and his family, the grief of the past decade has been a constant. So has their effort to make his words a reality.
The Center that CARES, a nonprofit service agency founded by Rev. Grayson in 1999, has expanded greatly in the past decade. Those efforts include opening the Jeron X. Grayson Community Center in the Hill District, which has provided after-school programming for teens and is currently providing space for students doing remote schooling during the pandemic.
That’s in addition to CARES programs at other locations, including one for younger children at the Wesley Center African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in the Hill District, where Rev. Grayson has been pastor for 24 years.
And CARES has indeed gone global — arranging social service and cultural-exchange programs for Pittsburgh teens traveling to Trinidad, Jamaica, Northern Ireland and Ghana.
In past years, the Center that CARES has commemorated the poignant date of Oct. 17 with ribbon cuttings or other landmark events.
And this Saturday had plenty of those.
Planned events included a ribbon cutting to mark the purchase of a 32-room residence in Homewood for 18to 24-year-olds emerging from homelessness.
The day’s plans also included the dedication of a recently acquired building on Granville Street near the Jeron X. Grayson Community Center to house violence-efforts and trauma therapy. Also dedicated was a mural covering an entire side of the threestory building that is part of the Pittsburgh Solidarity for Change project, coordinated by artist Kyle Holbrook, which is producing 10 murals around the city reflecting solutions to police brutality, systemic racism and gun violence. The mural, depicting two women in African dress, reflects “one of those solutions is showing the beauty of African-American culture and especially respecting women,” Mr. Holbrook said. It is designed by artist Lil Baby Artworld and painted by artist Amun Ray and Mr. Holbrook.
Saturday also included a ribboncutting for the CARES CommuniTEA Cafe, planned for opening in the near future at the site of the former Crazy Mocha coffee shop in the recently vacated Centre Heldman Plaza in the Hill District, now managed by the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh.
“And so it’s been a journey,” Rev. Grayson said, but Jeron’s “spirit is with us.”
Rev. Grayson, a native of Brooklyn, and his wife, attorney Marsha Hughes-Grayson, previously lived in North Carolina, where Rev. Grayson worked as a pastor and where their three children were born. They moved to Pittsburgh after he became pastor of Wesley Center in 1996.
Throughout his years in Pittsburgh, Rev. Grayson has presided at funerals for young African-Americans killed in gun violence. He’s done his best to console other families, and CARES includes a group that works with police and other community groups to intervene and prevent retaliatory attacks after a shooting.
“There’s too much blueon-black [violence], but too much black-on-black [violence],” he said.
In 2010, it was his family’s turn to receive consolation when they received the worst possible news.
Jeron Grayson, a star athlete at Schenley, had begun his freshman year at Hampton University in Virginia. During his October weekend visit, he was at a party at an off-campus apartment near Cal U. Another young man, Keith E. Jones, who was denied entry into the party, returned with a gun and began firing, police said. One of the bullets fatally struck Jeron.
More than a thousand people crowded into Wesley Center for Jeron’s funeral, where Rev. Grayson noted one of his son’s nicknames, “G,” and began teaching a mantra to young people he repeats to this day: “G stands for never touch a gun.”
Jones, now 29, is incarcerated at State Correctional Institution Houtzdale. He was sentenced in 2011 to 15 to 30 years in prison after pleading guilty in Washington County Court of Common Pleas to third-degree murder and other crimes. He’s eligible to apply for parole after serving the minimum.
“Part of me died 10 years ago,” Rev Grayson said, adding it is still difficult to understand. “Because honestly, even with a strong faith, you don’t totally. You’ll never get it.”
Rev. Grayson recalls the outpouring, not just of sympathy, but of support from individuals to foundations for the causes supported by CARES, including the acquisition of the site that became the center named for his son.
”It feels strange,” he said. “Sometimes I wonder, would this have happened without that loss? I wrestle with that. For some reason, his death affected across racial lines, across denominational lines. It was like any parent could say, ‘That could have been my son coming home from college.’ He was never in the streets, not on drugs, has no record, just at the wrong place at the wrong time. And so it just caused a community support that raised over $2 million from foundations and people to pay for this building. And the rest is history.” Rev. Grayson hopes the work done in Jeron’s memory for at-risk teens has been preventing other tragedies. “I just thought that the young man who took Jeron’s life, I think he was like, maybe 20 himself,” he said. “And I just felt that as I assessed it, maybe if he had been blessed to have services that we offer here, ... it would have given him better options.”