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Aretha Franklin honored at prayer vigil in Detroit

Ten ministers and deacons from several churches across the city took the podium at the vigil to speak, pray and sing.
Credit: Mandi Wright, Detroit Free Press
A prayer vigil was held for Aretha Franklin at New Bethel Baptist Church Wednesday, August 15, 2018. Franklin is reported to be gravely ill.

DETROIT, Mich. - While Aretha Franklin reportedly lay ill in her home in Detroit's Riverfront Towers at 5 a.m. Wednesday morning, more than 75 people gathered at her father's former church to pray for her well-being.

The New Bethel Baptist Church, founded in 1932, was led for 33 years by the late Rev. C. L. Franklin, father of the Queen of Soul. The church's current leader, the Rev. Robert Smith Jr., inaugurated a tradition of 5 a.m. services and dedicated Wednesday's to the ailing singer.

The prayer vigil saw 10 ministers and deacons from several Detroit churches take the podium at New Bethel to speak, pray and sing.

With Calvin Hughes, who Smith introduced as "the only man to play the organ for both the pope and the Queen of Soul," on the organ, the Rev. Ryan Johnson of the Greater Burnette Baptist Church led the first rousing sermon.

"Father God, we come this morning asking you to touch the Queen of Soul today. Lord we ask you to touch her even right now. Lord you know her because you blessed her right here in this church many years ago," Johnson said, to a chorus of cheers.

"You blessed her father to be one of the greatest preachers of the 20th Century. But then, Holy Father, you gifted her with the gift of song. Then Holy Father you have allowed her to share her gift with this world. Then Lord you have allowed us to be touched not only by the gift of her music but by her generous spirit, her kind acts and deeds."

Ruby Ann Darling, a pastor and civil rights activist from the Bahamas, also praised Franklin's charity.

"We are going to rejoice (today), because the purpose for which we are gathered is the cause of a virtuous woman," Darling said. "A woman of substance. A woman who stretched out her hand to the poor. A woman who said, 'Take my voice and let me sing.'"

Fannie Tyler, Franklin's longtime executive assistant, told reporters afterwards that the singer had donated considerable amounts of money to the church and the community. Tyler accepted a bouquet of flowers from New Bethel on Franklin's behalf.

Many of those gathered said they felt that attending the early morning service was the least they could do. "We owe it to her," 48-year-old Alycia Roberts of Detroit said after the service. "She was a blessing to all of us. I'm here out of respect," she said, with tears in her eyes.

Roberts said that Franklin represented something important to her family and to the community. "She came up with my dad and my uncle and my mom in this area. I still live in the area.

"Her music touched everybody — even as a little girl I was dancing to her."

Mary Boone, 59, of Detroit, agreed. "My mother and father used to listen to her and you just (have to) love her spirit," she said.

"She's in the Lord's hand now."

Smith said he was heartened by how many people had turned out; usually only 10 to 12 attend his weekly 5 a.m. service.

Aretha Franklin's personal secretary Fannie Tyler, left, greets well wishers and media after a prayer vigil for Franklin at the New Bethel Baptist Church on Wednesday, August 15, 2018. (Photo: Mandi Wright, Detroit Free Press)

Franklin has had as big an impact on him as anyone else in the room, he said. Her father had opened the way for a new generation of black ministers starting in the late 1950s and into the 1960s. Smith partially attributed his own service in the clergy to the elder Franklin's work.

Running the Franklin family's church never gets old for the reverend. "I'm from a small country town, so to hear her name, it means everything to me. I'm always at a high level of excitement about her all the time."

The congregants weren't the only ones who felt they were in service to Franklin, even as they prayed for her health.

"I call her Queen all the time," Smith said. "People say, 'How do you all get along?' I tell them, she's the Queen, I'm in her Queendom.

"Whatever she tells me is what I do."

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