(Photo by Karen Brewer)

Rev. Julius and Linda Scipio, at their 50th wedding anniversary celebration (held at Secona Baptist Church in 2004), posed beside an enlarged photograph of them on their wedding day.


        What a wonderful tribute to the Rev. Dr. Julius Scipio his funeral service --homegoing celebration - was on Saturday, December 19, 2009.
        Since meeting him, I have always thought very highly of him.
        Born in 1928, Dr. Scipio was named for his paternal grandfather, also a minister. "I just felt a strange urge to be a preacher, like him," Dr. Scipio once told me. "From the time I was five years old, I felt I was drawn to the ministry."  
        After many years as a Methodist minister, then several years in evangelism, he was called to pastor Royal Baptist Church in Anderson, where he served until his passing, from cancer.
        I met him several years ago, when I was a newspaper editor. He was a welcomed guest speaker at  different area events I covered for the newspaper, including at local schools. In 2004, I interviewed him and his wife, in their home, for a story on their 50 years of marriage and life in the ministry. What a wonderful couple.
        Dr. Scipio graduated from Claflin College, then earned his Master of Divinity degree from Gammon Seminary in Atlanta. He was bestowed an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Southern Wesleyan University.
        He was honored locally and nationally with Jefferson Awards for Public Service for his work with The Elephant Men, an organization he founded. "The Elephant Men was started for troubled young men who didn't have a lot of support from home," he explained to me. "We would go to the courts. I noticed there were several kids being processed. They would send them down to Columbia, because there was no alternative. I started working with the judges to come up with an alternative to prison, and they were very cooperative. We were able to do some miraculous things with young people who were constantly in trouble and get them on the right track. Our motto was 'to protect and direct.'" The name for the organization came from the fact that adult elephants, in the wild, will circle around a younger elephant to protect him.
        Dr. Scipio was indeed a man of accomplishment.
        While I respect accomplishments, I admire character and kindness even more, with or without accomplishments.
        He was indeed a man of character, and I will always remember him for his kindness toward others.
        The program from Saturday's service said of him: "His belief, as he stated many times throughout his life, was that, 'People don't only want to hear a sermon; they sometimes need to see a sermon.' "
        I heard him say, "Christianity should be so much a part of my life that it affects the way I talk, the way I walk, the way I relate to people. The song goes, 'How shall they know we are Christians? By our love.' We can talk religion, but we've got to be able to live it. We've got to be able to mean what we say."
        He once told me that a joy of his ministry was "to hear young people, whose lives I've been able to touch, years later come back and say, 'I am what I am because I got a chance to meet you.' I was able to multiply my life through the lives of young people."
        Oh, if only each one of us could do the same.

Related story:  Rev. Julius Scipio: Born to Be a Preacher