“We count Jester Hairston as one of...

“We count Jester Hairston as one of our patriarchs, one whose life exemplifies wisdom and an extraordinary spirit,” said the Rev. James M. Lawson Jr., pastor of Holman United Methodist Church.

Next week, Hairston will be the guest of honor as Holman celebrates the 93rd birthday of its longtime member, who parlayed his grandmother’s memories of slavery, a thirst for education and religious faith into a career in music and the theater.

The church will present several choirs from around the city in a musical tribute at 7:30 p.m. Friday to the man whose long career has included composing, arranging and conducting music for Broadway, Hollywood and choirs worldwide. Hairston will conduct two of his songs. At 6:30 p.m. July 9, the church will host a birthday banquet.

Hairston’s music is familiar to the Holman Choir and to choral groups everywhere. A noted authority on Negro spirituals and folk songs, Hairston’s compositions include “Amen,” which was made popular by the 1963 film “Lilies of the Field,” starring Sidney Poitier. Also an actor, he played the Kingfish’s brother-in-law Leroy in the “Amos ‘n’ Andy” television and radio shows, and had a part in the Johnny Weissmuller “Tarzan” films. More recently, he played the deacon Rolly Forbes on the television series “Amen” in the 1970s. But Hairston is primarily known as an arranger of African American choral music.

Looking back, it’s easy to spot the milestones along Hairston’s journey to success: cum laude graduation at Tufts University with a degree in music; graduate work at the Juilliard School of Music; assistant to African American conductor Hall Johnson in New York and then Hollywood, for the filming of “Green Pastures” and “Lost Horizon”; choral arranger for Russian-born composer Dimitri Tiomkin. Hairston holds honorary doctorate degrees from half a dozen universities.

But the road to recognition and honor was long and hard, he recalls.

Hairston’s family left Belews Creek, N.C., site of the plantation where his grandparents were slaves, when he was a baby. His parents had heard that blacks could get jobs in the coal mines and steel mills in Pennsylvania.

His father died within a year of their departure and his maternal grandmother came from Virginia to help raise him.

Hairston fondly remembers summer afternoons in Homestead, Pa., just across the Monongahela River from Pittsburgh, when his grandmother and her friends would sing and talk about their lives as slaves in the South.

“I listened to the old people until I was 18 and left for college,” he says. “By then, I knew all the dialects of the different plantations. All their music and stories went into my brain.”

Hairston says he was “determined to go to college because none in my family had gone.” He kept quitting school to work when he ran out of tuition money, so it took him nine years to complete four years of college at the University of Massachusetts and at Tufts. He has lived in Los Angeles since 1935.

Whether he is conducting the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, as he did last month, or 25,000 singers from all over Europe, as he did three years ago at the invitation of the Rev. Robert Schuller, Hairston says his gift--and his challenge--is “teaching white people to get it right--the dialect and the nice swings, the rhythm.” He is able to do so “partly from religious inspiration and partly from musical knowledge,” he said.

Hairston’s wife, Margaret, died nine years ago. He lives in Windsor Hills with his stepdaughter and keeps close ties to his three grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. He enjoys traveling to regional reunions of Hairstons, who are not necessarily blood relatives but, like him, are descendants of Hairston Plantation slaves who bore the surname of their owner. Hairston keeps up a friendship with Peter Hairston of Belews Creek, the great-grandson of the man who owned his grandfather.

Hairston says, “genuine friendships based on the Bible” are what seem important to him. “I’m not a meticulous Bible reader,” he said, “but I do believe in religion and have a little truck with the God that I serve, which I think is the God of all people, white and black. He looks after me when I’m not working and when I’m working.”

* Holman United Methodist Church is at 3320 W. Adams Blvd., Los Angeles. Admission to Friday’s performance is free; donations will be accepted. Tickets to Saturday’s banquet, $50, are limited to 350. Proceeds will be given in Hairston’s honor to the church’s building fund. (213) 731-7285.

DATES

* Catholic Native Americans will hold a powwow and celebration--the largest of its kind in the West--from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. July 9, and from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. July 10 at Loyola Marymount University. Dancers and vendors of traditional crafts and food will take part in the fifth annual City of the Angels Kateri Circle Pow Wow. A Mass in honor of Kateri Tekakwitha, a candidate for canonization by the Vatican, will be held at 10 a.m. July 10. The event is free and open to the public. (310) 338-7519.

* The Festival of Freedom Picnic, honoring the 40th anniversary of Crystal Cathedral Ministries, will be held from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday at the cathedral. The turn-of-the century-themed event features barbershop quartets, Dixieland bands, stilt walkers and an old-fashioned cakewalk, along with rides, clowns and pony and camel rides. Admission is free. Lewis Street and Chapman Avenue, Garden Grove. (714) 971-4000.

* More than 450 local churches will participate in the Orange County Harvest Crusade, which is expected to draw more than 100,000 people to the Anaheim Stadium from 7:30 to 9 p.m. the weekend of July 8-10. Begun in 1990, the traveling evangelical crusade features an informal atmosphere, contemporary music and messages by Pastor Greg Laurie of Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside. A Harvest Kids’ Crusade program, for children ages 5-12, will be presented at 11 a.m. July 9. Admission is free; donations accepted. Spanish and Korean translation and signing for the hearing impaired will be provided. (909) 687-6595.

* The Earth Trust Foundation presents a two-day event, “The Absence of Elders, The Violence of Youth: A Symposium About Men, Community and Male Youth” next weekend. At 7:30 p.m. Friday, author and scholar Michael Meade, will lead a dialogue of community activists from various ethnic backgrounds at UCLA’s Dickson Art Center Lecture Hall. Men, women and youths are invited. Admission is $12 and up. From 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. July 9, a males-only workshop will be conducted by Meade at Drew University, 1621 E. 120th St., Los Angeles. Workshop admission starts at $35. Some scholarships are available. For registration and information, phone (310) 456-3534.

* A Recovery Mass will be held at Christ the Shepherd Lutheran Church in Altadena at 10:30 a.m. Sunday to celebrate the recovery from alcoholism and drug abuse of people from 27 substance-abuse groups. The Rev. Harold Banks of Trinity Church, Long Beach, will preach and the True Miracle Singers of Union Station in Pasadena will perform. Luncheon follows. 185 W. Altadena Dr. (818) 398-8475.

* Two Masses will be held by St. Cross Episcopal Church on the beach at 22nd Street in Hermosa Beach: at 9:30 a.m. Sunday and Aug. 21. Dress casually; bring towels or beach chairs. Park at the church and walk or use the shuttle service. Join participants for breakfast at 8 a.m., or pack a lunch and a kite or Frisbee for after-the-service fun. (310) 376-8989.

Notices may be sent to Southern California File by mail c/o Religion Editor, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053, or by fax to (213) 237-4712. Items must be brief and arrive at least three weeks in advance of the event announced. Include a phone number, date, time and full address.