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City People

Advice is her thing

Minister and businesswoman Michelle Patty doesn't shy away from issues that affect the black community.

By JANET ZINK
Published June 10, 2005

TAMPA - Michelle Patty said she was surprised when she became a key player in the trial of Jennifer Porter.

Porter, a 29-year-old dance teacher, is charged with leaving the scene of an accident that resulted in the death of two young boys crossing a street in North Tampa.

Patty emerged as the spiritual adviser to Lisa Wilkins, the mother of the boys, and facilitated a meeting between Porter and Wilkins.

Patty was the only witness, and her account of the meeting was part of a report released by the State Attorney's Office last week.

It's far from the first time the assistant minister at St. Mark's Missionary Baptist Church in Port Tampa has been in the public eye.

Patty gave a prayer at the funeral of Antwan Walker, a soldier from Tampa killed in Iraq, and helped get a Port Tampa recreation center renamed for Kwane Doster, the college football star shot to death outside Ybor City last year.

"She's a good-hearted person," said Doster's mother, Kelly.

Patty, who lives in Hickory Lakes Estates in Brandon, has been a Doster family friend for years.

"I called her personally because she's always been a spiritual guide for me," Kelly Doster said. "She's a sweetheart."

Patty has been a player in social and political issues that affect black and poor communities for more than 20 years.

In the 1980s, she led a group that stopped a move by the Hillsborough County Commission to close a Head Start program in West Tampa.

"That was my very beginning," Patty said. "We made up some homemade signs and took parents and grandparents."

In the mid 1990s, she fought Tampa's effort to turn a former slave ship into a pirate museum and organized a boycott after the Tampa Bay Center closed early on the night of the annual football game between Florida A&M University and Bethune-Cookman College at nearby Raymond James Stadium.

Some perceived the closure as racist. The mall issued an apology. The boycott was lifted. The game is now played in Orlando.

Still, some question her ethics and see Patty's recent activities as opportunistic.

Longtime Tampa lawyer Delano Stewart, who has known Patty all her life, said she is using other people's tragedies to promote her legal and medical referral services.

Patty, 51, owns Michelle B. Patty Referral and Advertising Agency Inc., which connects patients to chiropractors.

Of the Jennifer Porter case, Stewart said: "She had a Bible in her hand and rushed to that lady's home and took her to a lawyer. She was there before the ambulance left, more than likely."

At the funeral of Wilkins' children, Patty handed out fans with a picture of Martin Luther King Jr. on one side and an advertisement for her business on the other.

But Stewart concedes that Patty has done some good work.

"It's hard to condemn anybody," he said. "She has been on the side of some good causes. But she's also a consummate hustler."

Patty said she simply "speaks the truth."

Now a grandmother, Patty grew up in what she calls the "old Hyde Park," a historically black neighborhood.

She went to the Dobyville School for elementary education and graduated from Blake High School in 1971 before integration.

She was raised by her grandmother with five older uncles she considers her brothers but is close to her mother, who was 18 when Patty was born. She has three younger sisters.

Patty said her grandmother, Floranita A. Brooks, a nurse, was her inspiration. Her home was a revolving door of family and friends who wanted advice and assistance.

"People say I'm a carbon copy of her," Patty said.

After the Head Start success, "people started calling me whenever there was a problem," she said.

She also hosted Black Talk, a radio show on WTMP-AM 1150 for five years. Patty said the show was canceled in 1996 after she criticized former Mayor Sandy Freedman in her bid for Congress. Patty then went to work for Freedman's opponent, Jim Davis, who won the race.

After her dismissal, WMNF-FM 88.5 public affairs director Rob Lorei invited Patty to host Straight Talk, a Sunday morning show about issues affecting the black community. She agreed.

Fellow activist Connie Burton often joined Patty as a guest host and eventually took over the show.

Patty left two years later because she wanted to get more involved with her church. Plus, she said, Burton was becoming increasingly involved with the Uhurus, an often confrontational black rights group in St. Petersburg.

Burton's show was canceled this year because station leaders felt the program had become a forum for the Uhurus.

Now Burton is targeting Patty. She recently distributed fliers calling Patty an "Uncle Tom" and criticized her involvement in the Porter case.

"They wanted me to make it racial," Patty said. "Miss Wilkins needed Jesus. She didn't need rhetoric."

Last year, Patty received a bachelor's degree in theology from Blessed Hope School of Bible in Seminole Heights.

Patty said she met Lisa Wilkins at the Morning Glory Funeral Chapel, also in Seminole Heights. Patty is the chaplain there, and Wilkins was planning the funeral for her sons. Patty related to Wilkins' pain because she lost a son to gunfire in 1994. But she also sympathizes with Porter, who seems remorseful.

"I don't see things as black and white," Patty said. "I see things as right and wrong."

- Janet Zink can be reached at 226-3401 or jzink@sptimes.com

AGE: 51

FAMILY: Husband, Jesse Patty; son Corey Felton, 31; daughter Jacqueline Billups, 26; and stepson Kevin Benson, 34

ON THE AIR: Patty, a community activist, hosts an infomercial for her medical referral business, which connects patients with chiropractors, every other Saturday morning on WTMP-AM 1150.

HOME: Brandon

THE BLACK LAST SUPPER: In her dining room hangs a depiction of the Last Supper with Bob Marley, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Elijah Mohammed, founder of the Nation of Islam, at the table.

THE REAL THING: Coca-Cola memorabilia fills Patty's kitchen from floor to ceiling. She has Coca-Cola cutlery and plates, a Coke phone, Coke spatula - even a Coca-Cola Barbie, still in the box.

[Last modified June 9, 2005, 10:29:11]