Roy Kirton, Amityville pastor dedicated to feeding the hungry, has died

Pastor Roy Kirton never forgot what it felt like to be hungry as a child, the oldest of seven in a single-parent household, and those memories blossomed into a lifelong ministry for the homeless, the jailed and the hungry.

The Amityville pastor and retired investment broker was known for organizing Thanksgiving Day dinners that served upward of 2,000 people, getting public officials, Babylon Town, other churches and chefs to join in.

Kirton, 71, the founder of the Circle of Love, died July 24 in Cary, N.C., after breathing difficulties and a fall exacerbated his renal failure, his family said.

As a child, Kirton sometimes went hungry and worked odd jobs during high school to lessen the burden on his mother, a hospital nurse, family and friends said. When she died while Kirton was a college student by day and office cleaner by night, he made sure his siblings finished their schooling, they said.

“I promised myself I didn’t want people to live the way I lived,” he told Newsday at his 2019 Thanksgiving bonanza.

He had already started pursuing funds for this year’s Thanksgiving dinner, illustrating an intense “servanthood” even as his body failed to match a mind that was still going strong, those who knew him said.

“He was like a junior Martin Luther King,” said his sister Janice Jackson of Wyandanch. “Everything he did was to try to make somebody’s life better.”

“Just keep on sharing the love of God” was what he liked to say, and he had a knack of connecting people, said his friend Pastor Jimmy Jack of Destiny Church in Deer Park.

In “Rock the Block” park events using rappers, music and food to attract young people to church, Kirton, with tears in his eyes after meeting down-and-out families, would bring them to Jack so the two could help them.

“His character was teeming with joy and he always saw the best in you,” Jack said.

When Kirton headed Ministerial Alliance of North Amityville, a group of local ministers, he opened it up to other religious leaders, resulting in college scholarships and other options for the disadvantaged, Long Island ministers said. His Circle of Love Ministry maintained a food pantry. He went to New Orleans to help Hurricane Katrina victims rebuild, then returned with $15,000 for new appliances because he was unhappy with what he had brought the first time, his sister said.

But his brother Christopher Kirton, of Raleigh, N.C., said the pastor was most likely the proudest of his Safe Harbor program, part of his jail ministry. It helped inmates get jobs, housing and other aid upon their release, his brother said.

That likely stemmed from Kirton's time as a high school teenager preaching the Bible as part of the Zion Gospel Church in Amityville and passing out leaflets on certain village streets where drugs and crime ruled and where he saw fellow students in trouble, according to his brother.

“That was part of the church program, telling us to have a heart for people,” said Christopher Kirton, who also preached with his brother back then.

It was “an act of God” when their worried mother, Alexandrina Kirton, walking in Amityville and followed by her seven children, was seen by the pastor of the Zion Gospel Church, Christopher Kirton said.

As the story goes, the pastor and church helped the family for years, ensuring the children took the education route. Roy Kirton’s mother even asked the pastor to make her eldest a pastor. By age 16, he was running the church’s summer vacation bible camp, arranging buses, teachers and activities for about 200 children, his brother said.

“He was always the one in front in charge and getting things done,” Christopher Kirton recalled. “He saw the energy of the Zion Gospel Church that was brought into our lives to help us grow up. They became our extended family."

Besides his brother and sister, Kirton is survived by children, Alexander Kirton of Houston, Texas, and Janelle Kirton of Queens, siblings Annette Harris of Fair Oaks, North Carolina, Linda Stallworth of Dix Hills, Eugene Kirton of Youngsville, North Carolina, Isabella Thornton of Annapolis, Maryland, Daphne Charles of Trinidad, and Jacqueline Kirton Bloden of Amityville.

A wake will be held from 9 to 10:30 a.m. Thursday at the Prayer Tabernacle Church of Christ In God in Amityville, followed by a funeral service, and 1:45 p.m. burial at Amityville Cemetery.