Rev. Cecil Williams 1929 -2024

Legendary minister, activist, community organizer, and civic institution Cecil Williams left this mortal coil on April 22nd.  Originally from Texas, he took over a struggling church in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood (the city’s version of Skid Row), and established Glide Memorial Church in 1963.

When he opened those doors for the first time, San Francisco was a much more conservative town.  It even hosted the 1964 Republican Convention a year later.  In the post-Beatnik era, churches were much more segregated, but not Glide Memorial.

The population of the Tenderloin in those days had many alcoholics and angel-headed hipsters, dragging themselves through the streets at dawn looking for an angry fix.  They were not welcomed by polite society, yet Cecil Williams never turned anyone away.  A few years later, hippies descended on the city, then young gay men, shunned by their families and communities.  Many of these new transplants did not know where their next meal was coming from.  At Glide, no one was rejected or judged.  He welcomed them all.

Glide Memorial Church

In the 1980s, many Southeast Asians fled the horrors of the Vietnam War as refugees, and found a door open for them when many were shut.  The same goes for Central Americas fleeing the Contras and rightwing death-squads, who often got their first meal and shelter there.

When the AIDS crisis culled many souls for this world, and those suffering from it regularly found no solace in the traditional institutions they believed would care for them.  They knocked on those doors, only to find those doors closed in their face. Cecil Williams held the door open for them.

He was an early pioneer of free lunch, and needle exchange programs, job training, and day care.  His joyous Sunday service was the place to be.  Celebrities, politicos, and the city’s bourgeoise would often be seen in the churches’ pews, right next to lumpen proletariat who lived in the neighborhood.

When I started working as a concierge in the 1990s, out-of-town guests had already found that his reputation preceded him, and asked me about attending Glide's Sunday services upon their arrival.  He was such a well-known and profound figure that even Clint Eastwood created a small part for him in his 1999 thriller, True Crime.

My relationship with Glide Memorial Church is a little more personal.  As a concierge in a high-end environment, I often find myself with groceries and food no one wants.  It is anathema to my being to see food wasted when so many are hungry in a city with over 60 billionaires within its 49 square miles.

For the last decade I have donated the unwanted food which regularly crosses my path.  They don’t know my name, they only know me as the Concierge.

And I am welcomed.