The Sugar Refinery Ministers

Marvin Rivers (L) and Demond Reddick

Marvin Rivers, Demond Reddick, Vernon Brown and Jerome Stokes all work at Imperial Sugar’s large sugar refinery at Port Wentworth, Georgia … and, they also among eight ministers of various faiths, united by spirituality, on and off the job.

Rivers (in the red shirt), a shipping supervisor, is concerned about people having a roof over their heads and enough to eat. He raises money through the Savannah community, and finds clothing and food from his fellow workers to give to people who live in Savannah and Haiti.

“Just about all the employees know I work with the homeless, including those in Haiti, and they leave (donated) things on the back of my pickup truck that I can share. Am I my brother’s keeper? Yes … the answer is yes.”

Marvin Rivers

“Nothing’s promised for us today. We need to live love. We need to express it in our daily work.”

Reflecting on the refinery explosion in February 2008, Rivers says, “That night brought a spiritual feeling, a lot of embracement, and caring about the individual. It’s more of a team, and family together.”

Reddick is a fork lift operator at the refinery, known as Chief Bishop. He’s a street minister who goes into tough crime areas to reach out through spiritual rap music.

What happened at the plant, he says, “made me appreciate life. It made me appreciate what God had made me. It opened my eyes. This is our job. It made me value life and living each day.”

Vernon Brown

Reddick compares healing with gardening – “Healing takes time … just like growing a garden – you plant, and then it takes time to grow.”

Vernon Brown has been a press operator at the refinery for six years. As a Pentecostal minister, he says, “You got to keep hope alive, or you will always be in a pit. Everything happens for a reason.”

‘You’ve got all different faiths coming together out here. I’ve seen a difference out there for the good … a lot of things have improved here at the company.”

Jerome Stokes (L) and Vernon Brown

Jerome Stokes is a supervisor of bulk sugar shipping at Imperial’s refinery, responsible to loading special railroad cars, each with 210 thousand pounds of bulk processed sugar. He’s been with the refinery for 31 years. He is also the ordained minister as the Macedonia Baptist Church in Savannah, a growing church in the community.

For him, the tragedy in early 2008 has “brought a lot of people together, spiritually and physically, through weekly meetings. People have gotten closer.”

Right now, he says, workers are getting more positive because they have seen things getting done, deadlines being met … and people are excited. His personal goal is to help get the Imperial refinery back to being the #1 bulk shipping facility in the U.S.