Community Housing Services Director Gloria Echols, right, Case Manager/Housing Specialist Angela Sherwood, left, and intern Daniel Strangler look over a site for their $5.00 Campaign at their office in Lansdale in 2011. Photo by Media News Group.
Longtime Lansdale nonprofit head passed away at age 79.
Area officials are recalling the impact of Gloria Echols, longtime executive director of borough-based Community Housing Services, a local fixture who dedicated decades to helping Lansdale’s neediest, after her passing last week at age 79.
“We lost a true ‘She-ro’ yesterday. One of three Black executive directors to pioneer social services in Montgomery County has passed,” said former Norristown municipal councilwoman Heather Lewis.
“My mentor, friend, and adopted mother Gloria Echols is with the angels wearing her crown that has to be at least a mile high and filled with jewels,” she said.
Addressed housing needs
Echols was the longtime executive director of Community Housing Services, a nonprofit based on Broad Street in Lansdale that was founded in 1984 to help address housing needs of low-income area residents, partnering with agencies and running programs as far afield as Pottstown.
“In only a few years, Gloria built the prime housing agency in Montgomery County. No other organization came close to the range and depth of housing services offered to Montgomery County residents with housing-related needs,” said Dick Detwiler, former CHS board member and director of the Indian Valley Opportunity Center.
Over just shy of three decades, CHS helped provide information, referrals, food, clothing, rental assistance, emergency hotel stays or housing, building maintenance, and shelter to thousands of clients, which Echols termed the homeless, the near homeless, and those living in substandard housing.
CHS also matched hundreds of people each year with holiday gifts through the Holiday Sharing program, helped families become homeowners, built single-family homes and provided housing for more than 60 homeless men in the agency’s Ezra House project.
“CHS, always in a spirit of open collaboration, has partnered with almost every other helping organization in our county to help our neediest neighbors,” Echols said when that nonprofit closed its doors in 2013.
At that time, Echols said the agency’s work would not have been possible without help from county government, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, volunteers and staff, and that employees worked tirelessly through the economic downtown that had begun five years earlier.
“In 2008 when we were first threatened with closing, staff continued to work without pay and gave out Thanksgiving dinners to many, knowing that they themselves were on the brink of qualifying as clients,” Echols said at that time. “We helped each other. Some of us have worked together almost from the beginning. In the end, we are all honored to have each other, and to have had this CHS experience.”
Detwiler said this week that he knew Echols as far back as 1986, and called her a “dear friend” — “she was more experienced and wiser than me, so I learned a lot from her about non-profit organizational leadership.”
Nonprofit ‘star’
At the start of 2000, Echols was named a rising star of the new century by The Reporter, Detwiler recalled, and a bio about her that was on display at Trinity Lutheran Church this past February for Black History Month outlined her accomplishments, including membership in St. John Lutheran Church of Center Square, her singing of the National Anthem at the Republican National Convention when it was held in Philadelphia in 2000, and CHS services including a rooming house for the formerly homeless, several buildings with apartments for low-income women and families, and a staff that helped provide housing services and emergency shelter.
“CHS staff under Gloria’s guidance provided caring counseling and assistance to individuals and families with housing-related needs in the North Penn communities and beyond,” Detwiler said.
She passed away on June 21 at age 79, and specifics about a funeral service or memorial were not immediately available, according to her obituary from Green-Cooper-Gaskins Funeral Home of South Carolina.
Beth Sturman, longtime executive director of domestic violence nonprofit Laurel House, said that “Gloria was amazing in so many ways and leaves a lasting legacy in all of the lives she touched, including mine,” while others shared memories on social media of how Echols helped them escape an abusive marriage, helped furnish their first home, helped provide gifts to kids for the holidays, and more.
Fritz Fowler, pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Lansdale, said Trinity will host a funeral service for Echols at 10 a.m. on Monday, July 1, and added that Echols left a lasting impact through her advocacy for the housing-insecure and low-income women and families.
“She leaves a powerful legacy of living out the commandment to love others and strive for justice for all of God’s children,” he said.
In a series of posts on social media after her passing, Lewis said she would not currently be executive director of the Reuniting Family Bail Fund “if it were not for her guidance, discernment and belief in me,” and said Echols was “an adopted mother to hundreds.”
“I am so so thankful for her and her life and the time we spent together,” Lewis said, adding that she and Echols “had an amazing visit last week and [were] in the planning stages for a CHS reunion. God knew he was calling you home soon and allowed for you to get out of the house to visit folks you love and who love you back.”
“Rest easy Queen. Your labor is done. Reap the rewards the heavens promised you. We’ll be all right,” Lewis said.
