Rev. Shedrick Hearon Sr., pastor of St. James Missionary Baptist Church in Kinloch, passed away Monday (July 12, 2010) after a brief illness. He was 97.
Rev. Hearon had been pastor of St. James for the last 50 years. He had been pastor of Rose Hill Missionary Baptist Church in Gray Summit, Mo. for 12 years before joining St. James.
Rev. Hearon was born in 1912 in Drew, Miss. During the Great Depression, he landed a job hauling cotton to a cotton gin in Mound Bayou, Miss. He recalled that one day in 1936, he was ordered by a white foreman to park his horse-drawn wagon to allow another farmer to move ahead of him. That was the last straw he told his family.
A few days later, he moved his growing family North to get away from the racism and Jim Crow laws of the Deep South. He told them years later that he did not want his children to endure the humiliation and discrimination black people suffered while he was growing up in Mississippi.
When the Hearons arrived in St. Louis, they joined the Rising Star Baptist Church. They later attended Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in St. Louis and then Rose Hill Church in Gray Summit. Meanwhile, Rev. Hearon got a job at Monsanto Co. He retired from Monsanto in the late 1970s.
“He was a man of strong character with solid Christian values, and he was a great role model for young and older members of the church,” said Roy Middleton, a deacon at the church.
Rev. Alfred Davis, an assistant pastor at St. James, said Rev. Hearon lived an exemplary Christian life. “I can still hear his words, ‘Love ye one another and treat everyone like you would want to be treated,” Davis said.
Rev. Hearon was married to Lillie Pearl Harris in 1932, a union that lasted until her death in 1981. He later married Juanita Melton and then Willie Mae Thrasher, both deceased.
Rev. Hearon is survived by three daughters, Marie Brown, Ernestine Edwards and Dorothy Elliott, a son, Shedrick Hearon, Jr., 12 grandchildren, 19 great grandchildren, and eight great great-grandchildren, all of the St. Louis area.
Funeral Services for Rev. Hearon were held Friday at St. James Missionary Baptist Church, 8181 Scudder Ave. in Kinloch. Burial was at Lake Charles Cemetery.
