“The Wire” / Germantown Connection

Some of you know about the recent passing of Mr. Henry Barksdale, father to Stephen, a fixture around our church. Stephen’s mother had passed away only a couple of years ago, and since he was living with his cousins and grandmother, whose family was already overburdened with a very sick husband and numerous children, it looked as though Stephen would be displaced to someplace too far for us to stay in touch.

In a wonderful answer to prayer, Stephen’s uncle Ron, who lives in the nearby neighborhood of West Oak Lane, took him into his house and agreed to keep Stephen attending G.Hope. Stephen hasn’t missed a Sunday service, except for the one right after his father’s death, and he’s even gone on our ice skating outing. We were hoping that he would be able to go on the Northern Ireland trip—unfortunately, the paperwork for the new guardianship will take too long to begin his passport application in time, so Stephen won’t be going with us.

Now, in a conversation with Mr. Ron, somehow this came up. Robert F. Colesberry, the executive producer (while he was living) for one of our favorite shows, “The Wire,” used to live in our neighborhood and was a good friend to the Barksdale family. The families were neighbors in the Pulaskitown section and the children used to belong to the same Wissahickon Boys & Girls Club—just down the road from us. When Colesberry worked on “The Wire,” he named one of the characters after his good friends from the neighborhood—Avon Barksdale, the notorious and very smart Baltimore drug dealer.

“But… Avon’s a bad guy, isn’t he?” C asked. “That’s all right!” Mr. Ron said, enjoying his family’s claim to fame.

I did a search for Robert F. Colesberry after that interchange, and found a memorial page set up for him at the show’s site. Here’s a quote about the man’s early life in Germantown:

To those who knew him early in life, Colesberry's successful film career was an improbable outcome. Born in Philadelphia to a prominent family, Colesberry's grandfather, the city's district attorney and a socialite, was “a Philadelphia lawyer when that meant something,” according to Colesberry's sister, Jean Brown.

But instead of the Main Line, he grew up in a modest Germantown rowhouse after his father struggled in business and ultimately, with alcoholism. Friends at Germantown High School remembered a talented athlete who did little else beyond hang with the neighborhood boys at the celebrated corner of Wayne and Tioga.

“He wasn't a boy that got into trouble,” recalled Ms. Brown, making exception for a single loitering arrest and one notable attempted theft of a ceramic cow from the roof of a local steakhouse. “But he was around the boys who did.”

Jill Porter, a high school friend who years later would profile Colesberry for the Philadelphia Daily News, recalled that the young man would attend all four periods of lunch every school day, having little use for classes. “He was nice and had this charm to him,” Ms. Porter said, remembering that Colesberry struggled to graduate with his class in 1964. “But we all thought he was going absolutely nowhere.”

In some ways, not a lot has changed. But in other ways, a lot. Will the young people growing up today in our neighborhood have the same opportunities in life that Robert F. Colesberry did? Their stories remain to be written. We want to be participants in them. And we want Jesus to be the main actor in them.