Quantcast

The DNAinfo archives brought to you by WNYC.
Read the press release here.

Rev. Clarence Norman Sr., Longtime Crown Heights Pastor and Leader, Dies

 Clarence Norman Sr., 85, served as pastor at the First Baptist Church of Crown Heights for decades.
Clarence Norman Sr., 85, served as pastor at the First Baptist Church of Crown Heights for decades.
View Full Caption
First Baptist Church of Crown Heights

CROWN HEIGHTS — The Rev. Clarence Norman Sr., longtime neighborhood leader and pastor at First Baptist Church of Crown Heights, has died, the church announced Thursday. He was 85 years old.

Norman served the church for 62 “glorious years,” said First Baptist’s assistant pastor, the Rev. Daryl Bloodsaw, in a Facebook message announcing the death.

“He was a great man, full of the Holy Spirit, and many came to Christ through him,” Bloodsaw wrote. “Rest in peace, Pastor, we love you and we’ll see you on the other side.”

Norman, the father of five children, including former Assemblyman Clarence Norman Jr., began his life as a pastor in 1953 at the First Baptist Church of Williamsburg, the first incarnation of what is now the 2,000-member congregation in Crown Heights located at Eastern Parkway and Rogers Avenue, according to his church biography.

Throughout his life, Norman was active in the community around him, working as a teacher in two Bedford-Stuyvesant middle schools, serving as a chaplain for the state’s Division of Parole and the Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation in Crown Heights and pushing for the creation of housing for seniors through the Local Development Corp. of Crown Heights he founded in 1987.

No funeral services have yet been arranged for Norman, but details will be made public soon, the church said on Thursday.

Norman is survived by his wife Ellen and his five children.