By Stanley O. Williford
Director of Publications
“My grandmother was the closest thing to me,” said Elder Ron Cole. “When she passed that was the first time I felt completely alone. There was such an emptiness in me at the age of 14. I said to myself, ‘Well, you’re alone now. You’re on your own.’”
With his elderly grandmother’s death, Ron had been denied a relatively normal upbringing for a second time. His birth mother in Detroit had other children and he was one too many for her to raise, so his grandmother took him. But she was poor. Her home in Nashville was heated by coal and she had no running water.
Three of her daughters lived in California. Realizing the difficulties of raising a child at her advanced age and in her frail health, they eventually moved her and Ron to Los Angeles.
Then his grandmother passed.
“They stepped up and raised me,” he said of his aunts. “Hazel, the eldest, had no kids but she and her husband took me in. The aunt that I was closest to stayed in Nashville, but she had five kids. Looking back, I’m grateful because the aunt that I lived with put her whole heart into raising me. She had spent hard-earned money getting me out of jail and knew I got high. I appreciate the degree of dedication that she put in.”
However, by this time Ron was being drawn into the culture of drugs and gangs.
“We were the generation after Tookie,” he said, referring to Stanley ‘Tookie’ Williams, co-founder of the Crips street gang. Tookie was executed by the state in 2005. Gang involvement, it seemed to some, was almost necessary for protection.
The incentive to join a gang was heightened after a couple of gang encounters for being in the “wrong neighborhood.” First, he and his cousins were attacked after a dance in the gymnasium at Sportsman Park (now Jesse Owens Park).
Another incident occurred during a date. “My girlfriend lived in another gang territory,” he said. “Coming from her house a guy sucker-punched me, and as I turned to fight, he pulled a gun on me. After that, we [he and his cousins] made a decision and started arming ourselves.”
To finance the gun purchases, he said, they committed “three or four robberies.”
“Things pretty much came to a head when I was falsely arrested for assault and robbery,” he said. “It wasn’t me. It was my cousin, but we kinda looked alike. Instead of ratting him out, I was held in jail until court time, but the witness never showed up.”
While he was in court, and as the prosecutor was laying out the case against him, he had a revelation: “It occurred to me that they were trying to take my life. I thought, when I get out of here I’m getting out of gangs.”
The fact that some of his friends at Washington High were graduating and he wasn’t helped cement the decision to change. A counselor told him about enrolling in night courses at Crenshaw High. Besides that, he was entered into a catch-up program to graduate.
After graduation, he enrolled at Los Angeles City College, but was barely passing. One reason, he admits, was that his mind was more on the female students than his studies.
“I was in the cafeteria looking at all the different women, but then I saw a guy with his mind engrossed in a book,” he said. “As I got closer, I saw that it was the Bible. I said to myself, ‘Ain’t nothing to that.’ and a voice said to me. ‘How do you know? You’ve never read it.’
“So I began to reason within myself. I thought, well, I guess it doesn’t make sense to reject something that you’ve never read. I’m going to read it. I got my aunt’s big Bible and took it to work with me.
“People started questioning me about the Bible. I lied and told them I was doing a book report,” he said.
“I worked in the mailroom and I would be in there a lot by myself. As I read it, the words actually came alive. What struck me was the scripture [in Revelation 22:17] where Jesus said whosoever will let him come.”
When he began reading the Bible it was with a bit of skepticism, thinking it was going to favor the white population.
“But when I read that scripture, it had no restrictions. It did not say whosoever white or anything. As I read about Jesus, it would hit my spirit. The Word came alive and I came to the conclusion that either Jesus is the biggest deceiver whoever walked the earth, or He was right.
“It’s always hard to describe the peace I had. You lose something in the telling. I had no contact with church. When I was in Nashville [living with his grandmother] I had taken an oath that I would never go to a church again.
“I was in the mailroom and I was talking to God and I asked whether there was any other way. Basically, He said, it’s either with you or without you.
“When He speaks to you, you get the full meaning. I knew what He meant – there was no other way. Jesus is the way. You’re not going to get there any other way.
“I want to follow You,” I said. “I don’t want to follow man. To me, most Christians looked miserable. They didn’t look like they were satisfied in life.
“He made this statement to me. He said, ‘If I be God, I ought to be able to satisfy you.’
“I said, well okay then. I said I receive Christ as my Lord. I was gloriously born again right there in the mailroom. I had so much joy and so much peace.
“The other thing I asked Him was, You’re not going to cast me out, are you? And he said no, I’m not going to leave you or forsake you.
“Even to this day, I have never lost my zeal. I had found the truth and I started telling everybody about him. I started going around to different churches. I was preaching in the park and everywhere.
“My aunt Hazel was attending Crenshaw, and she had a friend, a prophetess, and they would have little prayer meetings together. I joined them one night. The power of God came into that room. I’m on the floor, laid out, and I can’t move. I attempted to lift my head and see what was going on. But there was a pressure that held me there. This warmth came up through my feet. It was such a joy that I couldn’t describe it. I was literally laughing out loud.
“The prophetess came over and put her hand on me. She said to me, ‘I see you behind the pulpit ministering the word of God.’”
“My aunt was excited. She had gotten me an application to a Bible college. As I was filling out the application, the Lord said, ‘what are you doing?’ He said I didn’t tell you to do that. Later He told me to go to Crenshaw.
“He said I want you to sit, listen, hear and do. And don’t try to be up-front.” Ron joined Crenshaw in 1980, where he has been a faithful and active member since.
He is married to Brenda Cole, whom he dated when they were teens. As if it by prophetic design, her last name was already Cole. They will celebrate a fourteenth year of marriage in April.
Ron was ordained by Pastor Frederick K. Price Jr. on November 29, 2015, and was recently appointed to serve as an elder and board member.
