Omar Jahwar, a community leader who died last Thursday of complications related to COVID-19, will be remembered this weekend at a memorial service and celebration of life.
Jahwar, 47, was a pastor, activist and mentor who drew on his own background as a troubled teen to create a nonprofit group that helped curb gang violence in Dallas for more than 20 years.
His memorial service will be 7 to 9 p.m. Friday at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, 650 S. Griffin St. in Dallas. A celebration of life will be at 11 a.m. Saturday at Concord Church, 6808 Pastor Bailey Drive in Dallas.
“He was a father, he was a friend, he was a son, he was a helper, he was a mentor, he was a minister, he was a pastor,” his wife, Anita Jahwar, said Monday night at a candlelight vigil honoring his legacy. “He was so much. And he was so much to so many people.”
Honoring a ‘giant in the faith’
About 200 people gathered at the vigil, where speakers and performers said Omar Jahwar’s belief in God inspired them to call the gathering a celebration.
“He was such a giving person and such a giant in the faith,” Anita Jahwar said, adding that her husband was a consistent source of support in the community.
The bishop’s family and colleagues reminded mourners of their faith that Jahwar was in heaven.
“Bishop is more alive than any of us standing right here tonight,” said Harry Lee Sewell, pastor of Family Cathedral in Mesquite.
Sewell was a regular speaker for one of Jahwar’s most recent efforts, the Heal America Tour. The two of them, along with influential guests, spoke in cities nationwide about restoring communities through police reform.
Heal America is one of many initiatives operating under Urban Specialists, a nonprofit group Jahwar founded in about 1998 to eliminate violence in urban areas. Another campaign he spearheaded, called OGU, trains former gang leaders to mentor at-risk youth.
About 20 OGU leaders and other community representatives, including Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price and several City Council members, took the stage to pay tribute to the bishop.
“I know my shoulders feel a little bit heavier, and I hope yours do, too,” council member Adam McGough said. “There’s a responsibility for us to continue on and carry the work that Bishop Omar was doing.”
Laura Cobb Hayes, national executive director of Urban Specialists, said she had known Jahwar since she was his principal at Lancaster High School. She said that, even as a student, he was “on a mission to change the world.” He was the school’s first Black student body president.
“He has touched this city, this nation,” she said. “He’s been called upon to speak in the halls of Congress. He has touched the world.”
A lifetime of achievements
Jahwar was born April 3, 1973, and grew up in Oak Cliff. His father, Larry Jefferson, said Jahwar was an avid reader and talented musician who was serious about becoming a minister from an early age.
“I speak on behalf of my family that Omar is the greatest man I’ve ever met,” Jefferson said, adding that family was “everything” to Jahwar.
Jahwar was the presiding bishop of the Kingdom Covenant of Churches and senior pastor of Kingdom WAR Legacy Church in South Dallas. Jefferson said Jahwar’s heartbeat was always in his work combating senseless violence, and he was proudest of “getting his church members totally involved in healing America.”
“He was a church boy, but he had the heart and courage of somebody that was raised on the streets,” Jefferson said.
Jahwar told The Dallas Morning News in 1997 that he could identify with troubled youths because he used to be one. As a teen, Jahwar surrounded himself with the wrong group, stole sports equipment and served two years of probation, he said.
After a close call with a prison sentence, Jahwar volunteered to conduct intervention sessions at Gainesville State School with young people who were gang members.
“If a guy is breathing, I believe he has a chance,” he told The News.
When he was 23, Jahwar was honored at the White House in March 1997 for his work in the Gainesville program. At the time, he was the youngest person to receive the national Achievement Against the Odds Award.
Jahwar was also the first gang specialist hired to work in Texas’ prison system, and he worked to broker peace among rival gangs behind bars and on the streets.
Antong Lucky said he was a member of a gang in Dallas and had just been released from prison in 2000 when he met Jahwar. It was the bishop’s idea to visit a neighborhood controlled by Lucky’s rival gang and negotiate a peace treaty that summer.
“Bishop Omar could find the hope in any situation,” Lucky said. “He could walk into any room and could control the attention and drive it where it needed to be.”
Lucky said Jahwar became a mentor and a close friend. In 2002, the two traveled to Russia to help with gang interventions during a three-day conference. Jahwar and Lucky also were recognized by then-U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan at the 2016 State of the Union address as “front-line poverty fighters.”
Lucky said Jahwar’s experience bringing gang members to the negotiating table helped him find common ground with almost anyone.
“He brought people together who otherwise wouldn’t,” Lucky said. “He always spoke to the best in people.”
Besides his wife and father, Jahwar is survived by his children, Omar Jr., Tabia, Omni and Anayahis; his mother, Rosetta Jefferson; and four siblings, Leon, Roman, Larry Jr. and Fayth.
