Troubled Trenton pastor keeps family legacy after council keeps honorary street name change
TRENTON » The gaudy and godly man with the scandal-plagued past dispensed with the fur coat if just for this moment.
Charles Brinson, the leader of Brinson Memorial Church, rushed into the hallway to grab a picture of his parents so he could put it on display while he addressed council members during public comment at Thursday’s meeting.
The legislative body voted earlier in the night 5-2 against rescinding a resolution adopted this year honoring his parents, Eldest Charles and Tardy Brinson, by renaming a stretch of Brinton Avenue into Brinson Memorial Drive.
“Sometimes the best thing to say is to say nothing at all, but to say thank you,” said Brinson, whose past scrapes with the law included allegations that he sexually assaulted a young teenager in 2008 and a federal conviction related to a three-decade-old money-for-marriage citizenship scam the feds described in an indictment as an endaround immigration laws.
At-large councilman Jerell Blakeley, who sponsored the repeal act after digging up skeletons from Brinson’s past, and George Muschal were the only members of the body to vote for rescinding the honor, which Brinson has insisted was intended to recognize his parents’ contributions to the city.
Blakeley pushed hard to get the honor nixed, telling council members that honor should be reserved for people who are “beyond reproach.”
One city resident who earlier spoke out against the honor said she associated the street name change as commemorating Pastor Brinson, not his parents, who first founded the church their son now runs in 1971.
Asking them to “vote their conscience,” Blakeley cited the need for the city to worry about all the perceptions that come along with having a street named after the Brinson family.
But the majority was undeterred as at-large councilman Santiago Rodriguez, who sponsored the initial resolution for the honorary street name change, urged fellow council members to vote against Blakeley’s undoing measure.
He said city officials hadn’t found a scintilla of evidence Brinson’s parents did anything wrong, other than being the adoptive parents to a man who had his own brushes with the law.
After the meeting, Pastor Brinson denied feeling vindicated by council’s vote.
He said earlier this week he was “at peace” with whatever happened.
“People have said many things about me,” the pastor said. “And they have come out not to be true. People have asserted many things about me that have no validity.”
During his brief remarks to the body, Brinson dismissed
the criminal allegations against him as “unfounded”; he was eventually cleared of sexually assaulting the teen when a judge dropped the charges.
Councilwoman MargeCaldwell-Wilson previously told this newspaper she felt “the sins of the son shouldn’t fall on the father,” pledging not to change her vote.
Brinson, an eccentric man with an expensive taste in cars and clothing, had also bristled at the suggestion his parents should pay for his crimes, alleged or otherwise.
“What’s his grounds for that?” he said about Blakeley’s efforts to undo the initial vote. “What proof do you have, what negativity can you produce to show why this legacy should not be commemorated? You have not come to me; you have not called me; we have not sat down and discussed this before he went running to the newspaper. And you cannot fault people for having the same last name. There are people who have the same last name as President Nixon. That does not mean they were culpable with Nixon.”