RIP: Anthony V. Thompson

This morning I went to the funeral of Tony Thompson -- formally Anthony V. Thompson -- who was for a time an associate pastor at the Quincy Street Missional Church, a small Dorchester congregation whose birth I chronicled in the Ma Siss's Place series in the Globe last December. Tony died on July 13 of kidney and liver failure. He was 52.

Tony and I had a difficult relationship. We talked quite a bit during my time at the church, and he always made me smile. But we never fully got past race -- he was suspicious of newspaper reporters in general, and frequently told me about his concerns about how he had been wronged by white people, including the law enforcement folks who had imprisoned him for a time -- and he was angry at me after the publication of the series, because I referred to the fact that the congregation had become concerned about his drinking, and that tension between him and others at the congregation had led to his departure.

But Tony also had an irresistible charisma, and an irrepressible passion for Jesus. He fancied himself a street preacher, and in the few years that I knew him he expressed that passion in many ways, starting with the Jesus baseball cap he would often wear. He arrived at Quincy Street and quickly distinguished himself with his ability to quote from the Bible and his evangelical fervor. He was loud and garrulous and energetic and intense; he started a morning prayer group and during worship he sang loudly and preached zealously and always wound up with one of his favorite lines -- "Feelings come, and feelings go. Feelings are deceiving. I place my faith in the word of God.''

After Tony left Quincy Street, he founded his own ministry, New Beginnings, which he ran out of his home, recruiting even his mailman, who sang at his funeral today. And then he threw himself into the Victory Chapel, on Columbia Road, where his funeral -- which the worshipers called a homegoing -- was held. Tony, who had joined the military at age 17, had a black beret in his hand and an American flag on his casket.

"He ventured down a lot of roads, but he kept God in mind,'' Tony's brother-in-law said at the funeral.

Tony's wife of 30 years, Gloria, invited Globe photographer Pat Greenhouse and me to the funeral; Pat shot pictures, as she always does, and sends along these images, which show Gloria with friends and family at the funeral:

photos by Pat Greenhouse of the Globe staff.