Bernard Sims remembers Christmas Day feasts of turkey, macaroni and cheese, greens, cranberries, cakes and pies consumed by relatives - maybe 40 or 50 - including his uncles from out of town. The holiday meant lively festivities and family.
It was also another opportunity to spend time with his grandfather, Walker Stone, who had raised nine children on Presstman Street working as a groom at Pimlico.
Stone would tell his young grandson what it meant to take care of a family. He would tell him to do right instead of wrong and to always try to do his best, no matter what the rest of the world said.
And there was more:
"We were always reminded that there were others less fortunate," Sims says. "That it's important to give back and share everything that God has blessed us with."
It is a charge he acts upon. Last night, the 35-year-old union organizer pledged himself as a mentor in an accelerated initiative to help city youth at risk for crime or violence. After receiving training from the Maryland Mentoring Partnership, Sims will meet regularly with a teen-ager, probably from West Baltimore, over the course of the next year.
Roughly 350 teen-agers ages 13 to 17 are already working with mentors under the' city's Baltimore Rising program. When homicide statistics for juveniles climbed 42 percent this year, however, Mayor Martin O'Malley called again upon Baltimore churches to aid in the effort to reduce youth violence. Sixty-five members of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church were expected to join the effort last night, as well as congregants from five other churches.
Young men are referred to Baltimore Rising by schools, parents, churches and the juvenile detention system. The program, which began almost two years ago, is administered through the Mayor's Office of Children Youth and Families.
Sims is not sure exactly what the experience will entail, but he's ready. A member of Bethel AME for 25 years, Sims is former vice chairman of the board of trustees. When the Rev. Frank Reid asked for volunteers recently, Sims was among the first to step forward.
"What has driven me to want to get involved is the number of street crimes and the violence and the young people getting killed," he says. "I think what's important is that we listen to these kids. They are so used to being told how things are. We need to listen to see if we can put a finger on what's hurting them, on what's causing them to lash out, on what's making them so violent."
Sims works as a community relations representative for Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union, joining with community and church groups to organize workers to push for better wages and contracts. He developed his listening skills, he says, when he spent four years as a booking officer at the city's Central Booking and Intake Center. As defendants were brought in from the street, he would take down their personal information and listen to their versions of what had happened on the street.
"Being in corrections put me in a mindset to see things from the other side," he says. "Kids were not growing up with a father in the house. Or they were being raised by no parents at all, or by another family member who may have abused them. Or they were growing up on the streets, being made the men of the house when they were 10 years old, taking care of siblings and having to hustle at an early age to make ends meet."
Sims and his wife, Wendy, a makeup artist, are raising their four children in Ashburton. Their 13-year-old son Justin hopes to become an engineer, Sims says, and is looking at the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute. Bernard Sims considers himself fortunate to have attended City College, taking courses at the Community College of Baltimore while he was still in high school.
He grew up in the middle-class neighborhood of Hunting Ridge, the youngest of four brothers. His father worked as a probation and parole officer in Washington, his mother was a manager at Hutzler's department store. When Sims was a teen-ager in the early 1980s, he played basketball and football in community leagues: "Crime and guns were something we weren't faced with at that point in time," he remembers. "I wasn't a perfect child; I did some things I probably shouldn't have done, but we grew up with good values."
What does he hope to impart?
"I hope this mentoring program will help kids realize that there's a different way and better way [to live]. The route I took may not be the best route for somebody else, but there may be something that I've experienced that will help someone see the light at the end of the tunnel.
"If I can encourage someone as I was encouraged, perhaps he'll be able to take back a positive vibe into whatever environment he comes from. He'll be able to say 'I can do this. I'm not what the world says I am. I can overcome these obstacles.' "