At the start of recent community meetings about the Legionnaires disease crisis, the seniors of Stadium Place have looked to the retired Rev. Jack Sharp for a few kind words and a prayer.

Sharp, 71, is the president, founder and face of Stadium Place, a complex of 340 apartments for seniors on the site of the old Memorial Stadium.

Sharp, who is also well-known as pastor of Govans Presbyterian Church from 1977 to 2004, will be the guest of honor at a "ThanksGiving Tribute" at Loyola University on Nov. 12.

The event is also a fundraiser for the Govans Ecumenical Development Corp. Sharp is former president of GEDCO, a developer of affordable housing for the elderly. GEDCO developed Stadium Place.

Honorary co-chairs for the event are Gov. Martin O'Malley and U.S. Sens. Barbara Mikulski and Ben Cardin.

A bio about Sharp on GEDCO's Web site, www.gedco.org, calls him a bold, tenacious visionary "and a diligent activist wholly dedicated to helping those in need."

His many honors include the 2008 Governor's Leadership in Aging award.

The Memorial Stadium site had a much more famous face on Sept. 18, 1977, when John Richard "Jack" Sharp, former pastor of a church in Albany, N.Y., was installed at Govans Presbyterian.

He was driving on York Road on his way to the installation service when he got stuck in a bad traffic jam, and worried he might miss his own installation.

The reason for the traffic jam? Orioles fans were paying tribute to recently retired Brooks Robinson.

"Everyone was driving to Memorial Stadium," Sharp said, laughing at the memory.

Growing up poor

Sharp, nicknamed Jackie as a child, was raised by his blind grandmother in a low-income neighborhood in Wilmington, Del.

They walked Sundays to First United Presbyterian Church (she was Methodist, but the nearest Methodist church was two miles away).

First United was the only integrated Presbyterian church in Wilmington, Sharp said.

Against the backdrop of the civil rights movement, Sharp attended seminary in New York and said he could walk to the Apollo Theater, then a magnet for political protest and speeches by Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

"The seminary ran carpools to Washington. We went on marches," he recalled.

At Govans Presbyterian, Sharp ministered to a senior citizen with health problems and no family, who was in and out of Good Samaritan Hospital.

Sharp was visiting the senior at the hospital one day when a doctor stopped Sharp in the hall and said, "Can't you and your church do more to help him?"

Sharp credits that senior as the inspiration for GEDCO's push for affordable senior housing. At a monthly meeting of area clergy, no one was surprised when Sharp spoke of the senior's plight.

"They all had people like that."

An epiphany

In 1980, Govans Presbyterian, Govans United Methodist, St, Mary's of the Assumption and Holy Comforter Lutheran each paid $1,000 to buy a rundown apartment building at York Road and Bellona Avenue. They incorporated as the Govans Ecumenical Homes Corp, precursor of GEDCO, on Jan. 6, 1981, and turned their newly acquired building into Epiphany House, 33 units of housing for seniors.

They later opened Ascension Homes, housing for mentally ill residents, at three locations in the York Road area.

In 1990, they applied for a Goldsecker Foundation grant to develop housing for the homeless. Goldsecker said no, but said it would fund them if they created a development corporation.

GEDCO was born a year later and its first senior housing project was Gallagher Mansion, at Notre Dame Lane and York Road.

Six years later, GEDCO held an all-day summit at Second Presbyterian Church in Guilford to discuss long-term plans and goals. The idea that rose to the forefront was to build a retirement community for low-income seniors.

Stadium Place opened with the YMCA of Central Maryland and one apartment building in 2004.

Now there are four apartment buildings. Other GEDCO properties include Harford House and Micah House for formerly homeless men and women, Shelter Plus Care for people with HIV and AIDS, the CARES food pantry and a community-built playground.

GEDCO hopes to break ground in spring 2010 on Green House Residences at Stadium Place, a project based on a national model to provide long-term care with more personalized care than in a traditional nursing home.

Also planned in the next few years is a mixed-use Village Center, envisioned as having small stores, offices and a cafe, Sharp said.

Longer range plans also include 135 market-rate condos, as a way to fund GEDCO's goal of providing affordable housing, Sharp said.

Continuing mission

Sharp envisions a day, maybe as early as 2012, when the Stadium Place project will be completed. But the mission of providing affordable housing to seniors and others will always be unfinished, he said.

"By the time the condos are started, GEDCO will more than likely have identified another need, whether it's (housing for) single-parent families or (for) emergency care," Sharp said.

"There will always be something going on," he said. "My days will be over and hopefully, GEDCO will be moving forward."

The ThanksGiving Tribute to the Rev. Jack Sharp will be held at Loyola University's McGuire Hall at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $125. Call 410-433-2442, ext. 17.

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