By Bryan Schwartzman
Rev. David Reeves, the owner of the D&J bookstore and distributor in Laurelton, arrives in the morning and is greeted by the energetic faces of 28 kids preparing for another day of summer camp.
A low cost, community-based day camp where kids are looked after from 9:30: a.m. to 6:30 p.m. is just one of the services provided by the book store, which sells and distributes black and Afrocentric literature.
“I just want to get people reading,” said Reeves, 59, who earlier this month was ordained as a Baptist minister.
Reeves grew up in the mountains of West Virginia as the son of a coal miner. He came to Queens in the late '50s and began working for Golden Lee Books, a distribution company.
“They taught me everything I know,” said Reeves, but added the company did not carry many books pertinent to black Americans.
In 1990, he took nearly 30 years of experience working in publishing and opened D&J Book Distributors at 229-21 Merrick Blvd., named after his two sons David and Julian, and enlisted the help of his wife Viola and daughter Celeste to help run the business.
“It was my dream to own a business named after my sons,” said the Queens Village resident.
But participating in the 1995 Million March in Washington, D.C., which urged black men to help build their community, changed his life forever.
“It was the most wonderful day of my life,” Reeves said, adding that it stood out in his mind even more than hearing Martin Luther King speak in front of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963.
He said the various speakers, including Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, encouraged him to go out and make a difference in his community.
The first thing he did was adopt six children and raise them in addition to four of his own children. He has two houses and several of his adopted children are mostly cared for by one of his daughters.
Next he turned the store's basement into a community center which hosts religious services, movie screenings, and community events.
“It was just mud and water down here,” he said. Reeves had the help of several engineers and architects to turn the damp basement into a state-of-the-art community center.
While studying at the Bible Institute for the past three years to be become a minister, Reeves also worked on creating an interreligious service in the basement. While he said he wanted to bring together as many groups as possible, he was happy enough having Protestants and Muslims worshiping together in the community center.
“God is one, so why do we have so many disagreements?” he said.
One of the biggest problems in the Laurelton community was the constant stream of drug dealers selling on corners up and down Merrick Boulevard.
“We went out and marched up and down the street,” he said. “We went to talk to young fellows about selling drugs.”
He asked drug dealers to exchange their narcotics for paperbacks, encouraging them to sell books for him across the city instead of drugs.
“I got two takers,” he said, adding that one went on to graduate from a four-year university.
He said most drug dealers now stay away from his part of Merrick Boulevard near 229th Street, and he thinks it is partly out of respect for things he has done for the community.
“They not bad kids – they just can't find employment,” he said.
In 1996 Reeves traveled extensively throughout Senegal and Ghana in West Africa, and collected a small museum's worth of African artifacts, which are on display in the store.
Reeves shook his head when describing the slave prisons and markets that he toured there, and then turned to talk about ethnic conflicts within the United States.
“Imagine what we could be if we overcome them?” he said.
