On the third Sunday in Advent in 1991, as we returned home from Crescent Hill Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky., 16-year-old Stephanie Erin Leonard announced to us: “I think it’s time for me to be baptized.”
It was the first time she had spoken so personally about that sacred rite. Since the church folk knew she was a person with special needs, some may have wondered if she could meet the conceptual prerequisites of such a life-changing ritual bound by centuries of tradition.
Stephanie didn’t understand the theories of atonement the way the rest of us do; she wasn’t clear on the historical critical method of biblical study, the plenary verbal theory of biblical inspiration, or the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father. Yet she knew she belonged in the Christian community our church fostered, and she wanted to formally declare it in baptism as she had seen others do before her.
Stephanie Leonard
We welcomed her decision, talked about it, and she was determined. So we contacted our pastor, Stephen Shoemaker, whom Stephanie knew and loved. He was everything a pastor should be for such a defining moment. She made her voice heard.
Steve did not speak to her about what she had to know, but who she wished to be. “If you receive baptism, Stephanie,” he said, “you are saying you want to be a follower of Jesus.” Do you want that?
She said “yes.” So on Christmas Eve 1991, Stephanie Leonard entered the baptistry of the Crescent Hill Baptist Church.
“Profess your faith,” Pastor Shoemaker said.
“Jesus is Lord,” Stephanie replied.
And under the waters she went, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, in the presence of a congregation that had nurtured her to faith throughout her 16 years.
Stephanie Erin Leonard died Nov. 26 at the Kate B. Reynolds Hospice Home in Winston-Salem, N.C., the result of aspiration pneumonia related to a genetic disorder present since her birth in 1975. The inclusion in Stephanie’s obituary of her genetic diagnosis was intentional, and we cannot overstate the lifelong process of recognizing her needs, their possible origins, and responding to them medically, socially and communally.
That her initial genetic test fell on her first birthday and ended with her sixth such test on her 50th birthday witnesses the slow but ever-so-critical development in genetic research. We learned in 2025 that Stephanie inherited a mutated copy of the CARS2 gene from both her mother and her father — a remarkable occurrence in and of itself, but extremely rare to reach adulthood much less middle age. Such a finding prompted our Winston-Salem geneticist to contact a geneticist in Colorado who specializes in mitochondrial energy and metabolic errors.
The resulting likely diagnosis, COXPD27, first appears in medical literature around 2015 and explains the wide variation of difficulties she encountered throughout her life.
Across her 50 years, Stephanie was living proof that “it takes a village” to guide us all in discerning love, friendship, community, identity and faith. Churches were “the light of the world,” guiding her to faith, hope and love. Crescent Hill Baptist Church began the process until 1993 when Sixth Avenue Baptist Church welcomed us into that historic African American-founded congregation in Birmingham. We knew we were at home there on the Sunday when Stephanie, sitting between us, said, “Mom, Dad, time to raise our hands” in praise and worship.
In 1996, we joined the faculty at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., and became members of First Baptist Church, the city’s oldest African American-founded Baptist congregation (1879). As Candyce has long told friends, “At First Baptist Church, Stephanie has a congregation full of aunties.”
“She wore her badge, imprinted with her name, as her own special kind of ordination.”
Sunday to Sunday across almost 30 years, church members loved her, wrote to her, spoiled her and blessed her to the very end. And Stephanie loved them in return. For several years she served as an official “welcomer” extending grace to all in attendance. She wore her badge, imprinted with her name, as her own special kind of ordination.
Doctors, nurses, therapists and other medical professionals were indispensable, many developing long relationships with our family and graciously accommodating her requests for photographs with them at almost every visit.
Teachers also expanded and enhanced Stephanie’s development. Special education classes nurtured her from age 6 to age 21, thanks to Public Law 95-142, as it was named when President Gerald Ford signed it into law in November 1975, the very year she was born. Special education was the source of learning and acculturation for our daughter, and we would be unfaithful to her memory not to warn that current federal funding cutbacks now threaten such essential programs.
The Oct. 21 issue of NEA Today, the journal of the National Education Association, observed that during the 2025 government shutdown, the administration cut funding to the Department of Education, “particularly staff that carries out services for students with disabilities.” The article commented: “By firing nearly every employee who supports special education, advocates say the administration is turning its back on 7.5 million children who have disabilities.”
The village is shrinking, creating a cruel void in the lives of future generations of people with special needs.
“Stephanie was at home when she was with people.”
As her parents, we came to understand that love, hugs, laughter, cards and letters energized Stephanie’s life in ways her mitochondrial energy could not. Going to museums, church services, sports events or academic conferences with her parents taught her not only how a community lived but also how she could be a part of it regardless of its location or what form it took.
Nor did she hesitate to express her feelings. Recently, when Stephanie’s anxiety flared during nightly teeth brushing, Candyce gently responded, “Please don’t talk to Mom like that.” Stephanie paused, then retorted, “Ok, Gunther!” Mom laughed and kept on brushing.
Friends likewise encountered her directness. Jonathan Walton, president of Princeton Seminary, called to express his condolences and recounted a recent chat with Stephanie when he told her: “I have so missed you. I think about you all the time.” Immediately Stephanie replied: “Well, you don’t ever write to me!”
Stephanie was at home when she was with people. Instinctively, she knew it meant conversation, laughter and good company.
A few summers ago, Stephanie went with her dad to Myers Park Baptist Church, Charlotte, N.C, where he preached, then led the “sermon talkback.” As the session was ending, an audience member asked, “Who is this lovely lady with you today?” But before Bill could introduce her, Stephanie Leonard stood to her feet and began to sing “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.” When her song ended, she turned to our longtime friend Bill Rogers and said, “Bet you didn’t think I could do that, did you?”
Today we respond: “Stephanie, we’re not surprised at all. The light you gave us shines in the darkness. And the darkness cannot put it out.” World without end. Amen.