Baptist church loses its spiritual leader

Rev. Dona Taylor, 88, who founded the Galilee Baptist Church of Christ in Bayside, died on Friday, September 15.
Taylor had lost his 11-year battle with prostate cancer, his wife Mabel said.
A World War II veteran, Taylor was also an accomplished musician, a licensed Reverend, a community activist, and a spiritual leader and friend to his Bayside congregation.
Born in Jamaica, New York, Taylor had four brothers and four sisters. His parents, a minister and a piano teacher, toted their children to Sunday school every week and gave them music lessons. Taylor learned to play bugle and trumpet, and played Taps at memorials for fallen soldiers until a few years before his passing.
After graduating from Jamaica High School, Taylor enlisted in the U.S. Air Corps, and while on a stopover in St. Louis, Missouri, he met Mabel.
Taylor, who was stationed in Guam, asked her to wait for him, and after nearly one year apart, the couple was married. They had one son, Robert Donald.
In 1947, Taylor joined the Community Baptist Church, and was made a deacon 13 years later.
After he took a job as a railroad clerk, which he worked at for 32 years, he began studying to become a Reverend. In 1966, he was licensed to preach, and three years later, he founded the Church in Bayside, at 35-23 215th Street. At the time, most of the members were his friends, and even now, members travel from as far away as Yonkers and New Jersey, his wife said, describing the Church's community atmosphere.
&#8220The members they just loved him, and loved the church,” Mabel said.
Taylor attended several Bible institutes, where he studied ministry and theology, and earned his doctorate of theology in 1984 from the International Bible Institute and Seminary.
He earned a number of community accolades over the years and was a quiet, deeply spiritual man, his wife said. His favorite hymns were &#8220What a friend we have in Jesus” and &#8220Precious Lord take my hand.”
&#8220The only time you could hear him good was when he was preaching,” Mabel said.
Mabel said that several churchgoers had not believed her when she told them of her husband's death.
&#8220They just couldn't believe it,” she said, adding that the congregation will most likely keep the Church open to continue in the tradition that her husband began.