Phil Trenary, Roger Brown and their shared faith in Memphis
Memphis sometimes feels like a city of dry bones and no hope. It felt that way for me after civic leader Phil Trenary was murdered as he was walking along South Front Street on a Thursday evening in a revitalized part of Downtown.
His murder appears to have been the result of a random street robbery. That is one of our greatest fears in and for Memphis, isn’t it? Random violent crime. Getting robbed or carjacked or road-raged by someone with a gun and no conscience.
It can happen to me. It can happen to you or someone you love. It’s an anxiety we all share on some level, even if the only crime most of us experience is what we read about in the paper or see on TV.
Truth is, violent crime is more than a fear for tens of thousands of children and adults in parts of this community. It’s a reality or a real threat, a burden or trauma they carry with them every time they walk to school or a bus stop or sit on their porch.
That’s especially true in the neighborhoods just to the southeast of Downtown in the distressed 38126 ZIP code. It has the lowest life expectancy, the highest rates of poverty, violent crime and “economic hardship“(unemployment, low education levels and crowded housing) in the county.
It’s the area where one of the three Trenary murder suspects was arrested after crashing a stolen truck during a high-speed chase with police last weekend.
It’s also the area where Trenary often
attended worship services at Greater White Stone Missionary Baptist Church, a congregation led by his longtime friend, Rev. Roger Brown, who delivered Trenary’s eulogy on Thursday.
“I believe my brother Phil got it right. I believe he understood his calling and that he was empowered by the Holy Spirit to make a difference in Memphis,” Brown said in his eulogy. “His common response to your situation would be, ‘How can I help?’”
The nearly 100-year-old congregation is just a few blocks from the crash site. It’s also just a few blocks from Loflin Yard, where Trenary had attended a Chamber event that Thursday evening before he started walking home on South Front.
Brown has been Greater White Stone’s pastor for eight years, but he’s known Trenary for 25. They met when Trenary was CEO of Pinnacle Airlines and Brown was consoling employees after the accidental death of one of their co-workers.
“I was his other pastor,” Brown said. “Our friendship was spiritual, social, recreational, professional. We have laughed together, we’ve prayed, we have cried and rejoiced together.”
Trenary, CEO of the Greater Memphis Chamber, was a member of Calvary Episcopal Church Downtown, but he was a regular worshiper and worker at Greater White Stone.
He helped the church launch The Stone Community Development Corporation, which is redeveloping 30 blighted properties in the neighborhood, including a small apartment complex. The CDC also hosts a summer camp for youth, a community block festival, and various service projects.
A couple of years ago, Brown noticed that people from the neighborhood were gathering at all hours on the church steps. He found out they were using the church’s WiFi.
Trenary and others helped the CDC develop a new WiFi park across the street. Trenary connected them to ServiceMaster, which sent 150 volunteers to help create the park and a mural by neighborhood artist Jamond Bullock. Last spring, he helped the CDC launch a new business called Meals for You Catering.
“Phil was always thinking about how he could connect you to resources he had or others had,” Brown said. “He loved Memphis, but his focus was not on how things were now, but how to make a better Memphis, a safer Memphis, and thriving and unified Memphis.”
Phil Trenary demonstrated his faith in Memphis in countless ways. So do thousands of other Memphis area residents. They don’t pack up and leave or stay away. They go out every day and take on the biggest challenges we face:
Generations of poverty, poor education and racism. Neighborhoods in distress and neighborhoods on the edge. Blight, crime, drugs and gun violence. Child neglect and abuse. Economic disinvestment and reinvestment. Suburban sprawl and inner-city withdrawal. And even more mundane challenges from fiscal budgets to tax rates, sewer lines to potholes.
They can’t possibly solve any of those problems, but they work at it anyway because they believe they can make Memphis work and make Memphis better. It’s a civic faith motivated by an affection for and a belief in this community and its people.
Three years ago, this newspaper talked to Trenary about local efforts to improve the community’s dismal record of supporting minority business participation. “It’s obvious none of us has done the job we need to,” he said.
He was right. But like Trenary and his friend Roger Brown, a lot of people are trying to make this community more fair and just, more hospitable and livable, to help it move forward, grow and thrive.
In the coming weeks and months, I’m going to write about them and their faith in Memphis.