Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 12, 1994 TAG: 9407070007
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: EXTRA1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By FRED KIRSCH LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
HAMPTON - It was a little more than a year ago when Lloyd Stephenson, the Catholic chaplain at the Hampton VA Medical Center, heard a few of ``his guys'' singing as they were walking to their dorm rooms one night.
Stephenson's guys were the vets who lived in buildings 148 and 50.
The ones from 'Nam who had never made it back from the drugs and alcohol or the nightmares, the ones who had gone into the service right out of high school because there wasn't any other place to go, the ones who kept coming back to the hospital after relapses.
They came to his spirituality class four times a week to learn about words like ``compassion'' and ``redemption'' and to talk about putting their lives together.
``I kept having the feeling that something was missing in all this therapy we were giving them,'' says Father Lloyd, who was priest at St. Gerard Catholic Church in Roanoke for six years before coming to Hampton in 1992.
``When I heard them singing, I knew what it was. The best thing we could give them was a voice. God gives us all a song.''
There were only about a dozen of them at the first practice Father Lloyd called last January to start up a performing arts group and choir. The idea, he told them, was that maybe in time they'd be good enough to perform somewhere.
Father's Lloyd's New Horizons group has been to Philadelphia. And Pittsburgh and Baltimore. It's won a national contest, and this summer it's been invited to perform in Chicago.
When the New Horizon choir begins clapping and swaying and its 30 voices rise up ...
``I feel the spirit ...
I feel the spirit ...
I feel the spir-ir-it ...
What's it doin'? ...
What's it doin'? ...
What's it do-oo-in'? ...
Movin' in my soul. ...''
the church, the school, the nursing home, the gym, the tent comes tumblin' down like the walls of Jericho.
The voices belong to guys like 42-year-old Lawrence Wilson, who sang as a kid with a group called the Best of the Showmen but hadn't sung ``in a long, long time.''
And 51-year-old Edmond Thomas, who had never sung in his life, ``not even in the shower.''
``Father Lloyd told me he was starting a group and asked me to get in it,'' says Thomas, who has battled drug addiction for nearly half his life.
``I told him, `Hey, man, I can't sing.' He said, `Yeah, you can.' I didn't know there was anything inside me, much less music. I thought I was dead inside.''
So did a lot of them.
When Johnny Maples first came to the VA Hospital, he ``didn't want to do anything.'' The 24-year-old Maples, who is the lone white member of the choir, joined four months ago.
``I went to watch them and I was so moved I said, `I have to be a part of this,''' Maples says. ``I didn't have any singing experience. But somehow Father Lloyd makes it work. He finds a place for you.''
|n n| It's a few minutes after 9 when Lloyd Stephenson strides into the chapel, hugging or high-fiving anyone in his path.
He's wearing shorts, a green T-shirt and a pair of high-top electric turquoise sneakers and white socks.
But even when he's in his robe, it's hard to think of him as a man of the cloth. How many 6-foot 7-inch black priests who can dunk are there?
Lloyd Stephenson knew he wanted to be a priest when he was 15, growing up in the Newport News projects where his mom raised four kids.
``It's the only thing I ever wanted to be. For a while, I thought I wanted to be a monk,'' he says, his huge laugh filling the room. ``I wanted to be a Holy Ghost father. But the older priests at seminary told me, `Trust us, you are not a monk.' ''
And for a while he thought he wanted to be a priest and a ballet dancer.
``But there aren't too many roles for 6-foot-7 black dancers,'' says Father Lloyd, who once danced with the Baltimore Ballet and has a strong theater background. ``So God got me full-time.''
He studied for the priesthood at St. Mary's Seminary in Maryland and at the same time went to the University of Maryland, where he earned degrees in urban studies and psychology. He received his doctorate in sacred theology at the North American College in Rome after teaching himself Italian.
``I was probably going to be an ambassador for the pope traveling around the world,'' says Stephenson, who is 39. ``That was probably the game plan.
``But the more I thought about that, the more I realized that wasn't what I should be doing. I needed to be nearer my family, and I needed to be working with people on a close basis. That's why I wanted to be a priest in the first place.''
After working as a prison chaplain for a time in the Richmond Diocese, Stephenson became priest at St. Gerard's in Roanoke, a small predominantly black parish. By the time he left in 1992, the parish had doubled in size and was nearly 50 percent white.
While he was still at St. Gerard's, Stephenson started making once-a-week trips to the VA hospital because ``there was no Catholic chaplain and I thought it important that there was one.''
He'd get up in the middle of the night, make the six-hour drive from Roanoke to the VA complex and then make the drive home at night and tend to his parish.
Stephenson calls himself part of the new breed of chaplains at VA hospitals, explaining:
``Chaplains at VAs were guys that walked around saying, `God bless you. God bless you, my son.' But `God bless you' doesn't solve many problems. Especially not the kind some of these people have.
``Now you've got chaplains with degrees in psychology who take a much more active role.''
|n n| Father Lloyd began his spirituality class not long after he arrived.
``Theology and all that stuff is important,'' he says, ``but what they really need is something practical and tangible. We throw all these words at them - addiction, sin, reconciliation, grace. But that's all they are. Words.
``And for many of them, words without meaning. What we do is talk about those words and what they mean. It all starts there. Without that, you can't build a faith. The spirituality class is all about building faith.''
And so is New Horizons.
Not long after the choir was assembled, Father Lloyd heard that a chorus that was to perform for the hospital's employees at a Martin Luther King Day celebration had canceled.
``So I said I could come up with something,'' Father Lloyd said. ``We didn't even have outfits or anything. We didn't even have a name. I went out to the store and bought about 15 Martin Luther King T-shirts and black pants and we got up there.
``This was a show for doctors and psychologists and employees, and they had no idea we had this group. When we came up, I heard someone say, `My God, those are my patients.'''
They opened with ``Swing Low Sweet Chariot'' and ended with a standing ovation.
``After that,'' Father Lloyd said, ``I figured we better get a name to call ourselves.''
It wasn't long before New Horizons, outfitted in snappy burgundy blazers and shirts and ties, were performing outside the hospital.
In September, Father Lloyd sent in a tape to the National Veterans Creative Arts competition. New Horizons won first place over more than 300 entries. In the past year, New Horizons has given more than 60 performances and is so in demand that it has a coordinating director, Leroy Jones, to keep up with it all.
Eventually, Father Lloyd would like to see New Horizons be 50 to 60 voices strong and become the voice of recovery among the 157 VA hospitals throughout the country.
``That's the dream,'' he says. ``These men and women have so much to offer. If you take this choir collectively, everything that can happen to a human being has happened to it.
``I tell them God has given you the vehicle to tell the story of hope. You cannot really know hope unless you know hopelessness.''
When Edmond Thomas first went to the Hampton VA Hospital, he was ``a guy you didn't want to know. I had no hope. I didn't like anyone. You, me, anyone. I didn't have anger. I had rage.''
Thomas hadn't been in Vietnam long when his platoon sergeant handed him a joint and said, `Smoke this, and as long as you're here, you better feel like this.'''
From there, Thomas graduated to ``every drug I could get my hands on.''
Last year, Thomas joined Father Lloyd's spirituality class.
``He's changed my life,'' says Thomas, who has left the hospital. Recently, he and his wife had a son, named Lloyd.
``That I could get up and sing in front of people has done things for my self-esteem I can't measure,'' Thomas says. ``When you have been where some of us have been and you look out and see people applauding you, there is no feeling like it in the world.
``The choir's became like a family to me. I'm still stunned by it all. I didn't think I could make other people feel good. I didn't think I had anything to offer anyone.''
Thomas is one of the two original members of the group. Mary Ruth Dabney, the lone woman, is the other.
The group is ever changing. It changes when people complete their stay at the hospital and usually move away. No one leaves New Horizons because they want to. And no one who wants to join is turned away because they can't sing.
``I feel joy when I'm up there singing,'' says the 36-year-old Dabney, who works at Langley Air Force base as a commissary stocker. She entered the VA in 1991 and stayed for 17 months.
``I had every addiction you can have,'' she says. ``I can't really sing. What I do is project. It blows my mind that I can get up here and do this.
``New Horizons is my anchor, my stability. It's my strength. I'm afraid not to come.''
|n n| It's a usual Saturday practice in the chapel for New Horizons.
Three hours.
A hard three hours.
Father Lloyd begins with a reading from Scripture (Matthew 18:15) and, of course, pauses between songs to offer mini homilies on everything from hope (``When the dream dies, you die.'') to the evils of drugs.
Cigarette breaks are five minutes.
You do it till you get it right.
And God help you if you don't get it right.
``People,'' booms Father Lloyd. ``No, no, no. Isn't it terrible what drugs do to the brain cells? Just fries them, doesn't it? Absolutely terrible. Please keep your eyes on me. I'm not that hard to miss. All right. One more time.''
The 30 voices rise toward the rafters:
``God gave me a song
That the angels cannot sing.''
|`God gives
us all|
a song'|
Keywords:
PROFILE
by CNB