‘The spiritual needs (are) just as important’

They packed church pews for DeAndre Green, his family, dressed in white, sitting in the front rows of the crowded church, facing a floral arrangement in the shape of a football. Green smiled at them from large pictures hung near the stage. A choir belted out a gospel song.

Outside the church walls, the Bay Area was effectively shut down, under orders from seven counties to shelter in place and practice social distancing, maintaining 6 feet. But inside the East Bay church, nearly 200 people came to pay respects to the high school coach who bought cleats for football players and mattresses for his students. Many sat side by side.

The service was one of many planned before the local and state shelter-inplace orders were imposed in California, and now in many other parts of the country.

In the Bay Area, the new restrictions forced families to make a decision, to either defy the orders and mourn their loved ones as they had intended, or follow protocols that would make such memorials far lonelier events.

In at least one case, a burial in Richmond was witnessed only by the widow of the dead, because the cemetery had restricted guests to just one person.

“The spiritual needs of the people is just as important as the physical and mental needs,” said Bishop Bob Jackson of Acts Full Gospel Church in East Oakland. “We pastors have been meeting on this.”

On the Saturday before the shelter-in-place order was announced, Jackson’s church held a wedding with 400 guests, not knowing that all other services like it would have to be pushed off until next month, at the earliest. His church, which has 6,000 members, is now shut down.

“If everybody came, it would be a disaster,” he said.

Though Jackson’s church did not host Green’s funeral, the pastor was aware of the family’s grief.

Green, 34, was shot in West Oakland on March 6, killed by a scourge that has ravaged the community for generations. Wounded after the shooting, Green drove two blocks to his home and somehow made it to the second floor of the apartment building he shared with his wife and kids before he died. Police have not yet caught the shooter.

As a kid, Green would play “church” with his nephew, Phil Miller, his family said, with Green acting as the pastor, Miller the deacon. It was Miller, however, who went on to be a pastor in adult life, with Green as his deacon.

And it was Miller who spoke at the service memorializing his uncle Thursday, grabbing the microphone to politely ask mourners to keep a safe distance from one another. Mourners — among them former NFL star and Oakland native Marshawn Lynch — did their best to scoot along the pews.

Lynch, who grew up with Green, recalled their days playing Pop Warner football and later competing as rivals after Green moved out of Oakland and attended De Anza High School in Richmond.

Lynch went on to play for the Buffalo Bills, Seattle Seahawks and Oakland Raiders, while Green spent his college football career at Contra Costa College and Montana State University and then returned home to coach the sport, most recently at Oakland Technical High School.

He also was a beloved school counselor at Castlemont High School. He was, Contra Costa College Athletic

Director John Wade said, “a man amongst men.”

Oakland Councilman Larry Reid said: “He made a difference in a lot of people’s lives. He sacrificed and worked to make our kids safe and gave them something constructive and positive to do with their lives.

“People are going to come out and honor someone like him, despite what we are dealing with.”

The crowded send-off for Green came as similar services have been drastically altered in the Bay Area, one of many rapid social changes that residents have been forced to make to try to slow the spread of the potentially deadly coronavirus.