Leader of Union Mission Ministries in Norfolk dies at 89

NORFOLK

The Rev. Theodore A. Bashford, who dedicated himself to helping homeless people as leader of the Union Mission Ministries for 52 years, died of heart failure Saturday.

Bashford, 89, guided the charity despite a history of heart attacks and health problems over the past 40 years.

"I believe this was the will of God for my life," he said in 1984. "If I hadn't believed it, I would have been gone."

The ministry includes a shelter in downtown Norfolk as well as Hope Haven Children's Home, Hope Haven Adult Home and Camp Hope Haven in Virginia Beach, and the New Life Center in Franklin. Bashford also started a mission in Newport News.

In 2007, the combined ministry provided more than 226,000 meals, 86,000 nights of free lodging, and 14,000 clothing items. It also helped 525 people embrace a personal Christian faith, according to the ministry.

"He was a man of great compassion for the poor," said Linda Jones, who knew Bashford for 13 years and served as the ministry's spokeswoman.

"He lived his life with the single-minded focus of leading people to the Lord."

While Bashford was lauded for his charitable work and passion, the Norfolk mission, with its clients that included addicts and ex-convicts, was increasingly seen as out of place amid downtown's renaissance in the 1990s and 2000s.

The nonprofit, privately funded ministry now plans to move to a 24-acre site on Virginia Beach Boulevard once it sells its shelter on Brooke Avenue. As of September, it had raised $7.1 million of a $12 million goal.

Bashford grew up in Portsmouth. He was a dropout from Wilson High School and married his wife, Marion Skeeter, in 1939. Though he had not been a regular churchgoer, he became a Christian at age 21.

He was a 28-year-old worker at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard when he felt a call to the church.

Bashford attended Claire Creek Baptist College in Kentucky, where he earned a GED, and he later earned a divinity degree from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

In 1953, he started Salem Road Baptist Church in Rossville, Ga., then led Mile Straight Baptist Church near Chattanooga, Tenn., for two years before taking charge of Union Mission in 1956.

"To me, it's a pleasure," Bashford said of the job in 1984. "The people that come into the mission sort of grow on you, sort of become part of your family."

A man of deep faith, Bashford preached locally to mission clients and to congregations as well as on television and radio.

"We're following the Scriptures that say to take care of the poor, the widows and orphans," he said.

During the 1980s, Bashford defended his policy of barring racial integration at the Hope Haven coed children's home but later changed his stance and opened the home to all races, as the ministry's other shelters had since the 1960s, Jones said.

Bashford received an honorary doctoral degree from Tennessee Temple University. In 2004, he received the Shining Light award from WAVY-TV 10.

Bashford is survived by his wife of 69 years, Marion, five daughters, 16 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren.

Steven G. Vegh, (757) 446-2417, steven.vegh@pilotonline.com