Each week, the Shreveport-Bossier Journal’s Tony Taglavore takes to lunch a local person – someone who is well-known, successful, and/or influential, and asks, “What’s Your Story?”
By TONY TAGLAVORE, Journal Services
At 9 o’clock on that August night in 2023, like every night, the family of four prayed. This night, it was the daughter’s turn to lead.
“She asked God to watch over us and protect us,” the child’s mother remembers. “She said, ‘Let no hurt, harm, or danger come to our family.’”
A little more than three hours later, the family was standing on the street, watching their house – the house built by their parents and grandparents – burn to the ground. Not even the foundation survived.
“Everything my parents had worked for, everything we owned, was in that house,” the mother told me. “Every memory, my kids’ pictures, my mother’s pearls, my dad’s military flag, my ordination certificate when I was ordained a minister. Everything was in that house.”
But leave it to a child – the daughter who hours earlier had guided the family in prayer – to put in perspective something so tragic.
“She said, ‘Mommy, God answered our prayer.’ I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ She said, ‘I asked Got to protect us—to keep us from harm and danger—and he did just that.”
Soon to be 55-year-old Verni Howard, Director of Community Development for the City of Shreveport, told me that emotional story – and her story – during lunch at a place she chose, The Noble Savage. Verni had a grilled chicken sandwich without the top bun, sweet potato fries, and half-sweet, half-unsweet tea. I enjoyed the chef’s salad, and water with lemon.
“In that moment, I understood homelessness. I understood the work God has called us to do.”
For nine-and-a-half years, Verni worked with the homeless as Executive Director of Providence House. Before that, she thrived during an 18-and-a-half year banking career. Verni readily admits her career path has hasn’t resembled a straight line.
“If you tried to take a pencil and connect the dots of my life, it’s impossible. I can’t do it. Every single step, God was preparing us in that season for the next leg of the journey.”
The daughter of a preacher who worked two jobs, and a social worker who worked two and sometimes three jobs, Verni grew up in Shreveport’s Mooretown neighborhood. It was a part of town built on caring for one another.
“There was only one single parent our street. She had four kids, and I would watch my mom empty our freezer to make sure that family had food. I watched my parents live and serve all their days. It really shaped who I am and why I navigate life the way I do.”
When Verni was 16, her parents opened a restaurant – the entire family worked there – that would become the place for movers and shakers to meet and eat.
“Right in the middle of Queensboro, I was introduced to what I call ‘Civics’, where men and women were committed to making community better. There were these conversations about church and religion and people and love and kindness, happening in the middle of a restaurant where two people who grew up poor had vision and tenacity and a zeal and a conviction and a commitment to work, and to make our community better.”
The plan all along was for Verni – who graduated at the top of her high school class – to go to medical school. “My parents said, ‘You’re so smart, you should be a doctor.’ I heard that all my life.” So, Verni went to LSU and earned an undergraduate degree in microbiology and chemistry.
But you know what they say about plans.
“I came home and told my parents, ‘I got accepted to med school, but guess what? I’m not going.’ My mom was like, Are you kidding me?’ I said, ‘I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, but I know I was purposed to do something bigger than anything I could conceive.”
Eventually, Verni went to graduate school and received a master’s degree in public administration/public policy. She was going to have a career managing hospitals. In an effort to beef up her interview skills, Verni applied for a job at a bank – a job for which she did not have interest. Verni was so impressive, she was one of 40 people nationwide accepted to the bank’s commercial banking training program. Out of those 40, only 16 would be accepted for full-time positions.
Vernie was one of the 16.
“My whole life has been built on faith. My whole life has been about walking in spaces I did not understand, but knowing that God had purposed me to do a certain thing.”
After 16 years in banking in Atlanta and Baton Rouge, Verni was once again led to a space she did not understand. Verni was offered the opportunity to continue her career back home. She was offered a fancy title and a nice salary – a salary she suggested.
“’What would it cost us to get you here?’, the man doing the hiring asked. It was just like you see in the movies. I got a white sheet of paper and they said, ‘Write down your salary. What would it take?’ I was so nervous to do that . . . . I gave it to the guy. He said, ‘Is this all you need?’ I thought, ‘Crap, I didn’t write enough.’”
Once home, in addition to her full-time work, Verni sat on the board of Providence House. During that time, the non-profit organization’s leader retired.
“A consultant we hired to help us find the next executive director said, ‘One of your best candidates is sitting at the head of the table.’ I was a scribe. I was taking notes. It was quiet in the room. I said, ‘I know she’s not talking to me.’ I was thinking, ‘Lady, do you know how much money I make? Do you know how hard I’ve worked to get to Senior Vice President?’”
Still, Verni prayed about it, and discussed it with her husband.
“He said, ‘You do know this is what God has purposed you to do?’ That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I called my sister. She said, ‘All of these things you’ve been able to accomplish—God has allowed you to have title and prestige. But he also needed to know he could trust you with that. If he could trust you with that, he can trust you with what is most important to Him, and that is people who are disenfranchised, poor, and vulnerable.’”
Verni took an almost $100,000 pay cut “to do the work I was called to do.”
And when Shreveport’s Chief Administrative Officer called a few months ago with an offer to work for the city, Vernie saw an opportunity to help many more people.
“When God says, ‘Go’, we go. When he says, ‘Move’, we move. My life has been guided by my walk with God.”
Running the risk of making Verni late for a meeting, I asked my final question. As always, what is it about her life story that can help shape your life story? Verni answered with passion, and of course, a purpose.
“Know who you are, and let that shape you and motivate you to always do good . . . . My story is never about me. It’s for my children. It’s about doing good for the benefit of others . . . . If you’re doing it for a big win for you, don’t do it. Don’t ever take a position, role, or title for your own benefit. Make sure what you do is for the edification of others and the glory of God.”
Do you know someone with a story? Email SBJTonyT@gmail.com.
The Journal’s weekly “What’s Your Story?” series is sponsored by Morris & Dewett Injury Lawyers.