Eddie Davis will never forget the last day he went to school. At seven years old, he watched out the window as men set a cross on fire and threatened to kill everyone inside. Eddie snuck out, ran home, and didn’t look back. Although he was too scared to return to school the next day, his best friend went but never made it. Eddie retraced the usual route they walked down the railroad tracks and found his friend’s dog—sitting where his friend was murdered. The boy’s body was found in the woods nearby.
The year was 1921. Segregation was the norm in Eddie’s hometown of Laurel, Mississippi. The KKK ran rampant. “Every day there was something going on,” he says. “They’d even hang people and set them on fire.”
Eddie never went back to school after the KKK killed his friend. He started shining shoes instead. In 1933, he left Mississippi and moved St. Louis. He came to Des Moines in 1939 and opened Eddie’s Shoe Shine downtown. And he’s still shining shoes today—even at age 94.
But in the nearly seven decades Eddie has been in Des Moines, he’s done a lot more than polish a bunch of scuffed shoes. He’s met people from many walks of life, making a profound difference in each of their lives. He finds joy in serving others and helping those in need. And the retired pastor has been sharing the message of Jesus Christ with his customers—and with the world—almost as long as he’s been opening cans of Lincoln black polish.
“Shoe shining is my job,” Eddie says as he sits on an elevated chair in his small, cluttered shop in the skywalk—one of three stands in Des Moines. “But this is my pulpit. This is where I talk to people about Jesus.”
Eddie in Action
Eddie wasn’t kidding. I’ve had many conversations with him, and we always end up talking about Jesus. During one visit I even had the chance to experience the master shoe shiner in action. When I told him I wanted to get my shoes shined, his eyes lit up, and he hopped down from his pulpit. “They need it,” he said with a smile. I climbed up, sat down, and rested my feet on the stands Eddie pulled out from underneath the chair.
I had barely gotten settled when he was already wiping a cleaner on my shoes with an old, stained rag—once white but now black with years of use. As he demonstrated his craft on my shoes like Picasso on a canvas, we continued our conversation.
Eddie’s quick to bring up the topic of forgiveness—something he can talk about with confidence. He’s long forgiven the men who killed his best friend and did all the other terrible things he saw growing up. “I had to,” he says. “Remember what Jesus said when he was hanging on the cross? He said, ‘Forgive them for they know not what they do.’ That’s how I feel about the people who did this—they didn’t know what they were doing.”
Our conversation didn’t go uninterrupted. As a group children from the Downtown Elementary School passed by, I heard someone yell, “Hi, Mr. Eddie!” I looked out the door to see a little boy waving in. After Eddie waved back, the boy ran along to reclaim his spot in line.
A few minutes later, a middle-aged white man wearing dirty, tattered clothing stepped in. “How you doing, Grandpa?” he asked Eddie. “You all right?” But Eddie was concentrating too hard on my shoes to notice.
“Do you know Eddie?” I asked the man.
“I know about him,” he replied. “He’s a nice old guy. You can learn a lot from this man,” and he continued on his way.
By this time, Eddie was putting the final touches on my shoes and brushing them to a sparkling shine. He lifted my feet off the stands. Assuming it meant he was done, I got up and stepped off the pulpit. Looking down, I could see my reflection in my shoes. “I don’t even think they looked this shiny when they were new,” I said.
“That’s because they weren’t,” Eddie said with a smile.
More Than Just Shoes
Shoe shining isn’t Eddie’s only ministry. The Eddie Davis Community Center, located at the western edge of the Valley Junction neighborhood in West Des Moines, is a nonprofit organization established in the mid-1990s that offers many free services to the community—meals, medical care, clothing, legal services, and educational programs. According to Eddie, the center helps more whites than blacks.
“Elder Davis doesn’t draw any lines when it comes to giving,” says Barbara Long, a board member and volunteer at the community center. “The work we’re doing is the work of the church—feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, uplifting people who are down. Whatever we have, we give.”
The community center serves a free lunch every day and dinner on Tuesdays—the same night the Mae E. Davis Free Medical Clinic, named after Eddie’s late wife, is open. They serve meals to over 700 people on holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas. There’s a library, a computer lab, and a recreation room—all free and open to the public with no questions asked. “The community center provides very badly needed services to the western portion of the metropolitan area,” says Robert Parks, a West Des Moines City Council member. “The services are far reaching, meeting needs that otherwise would not be met.”
The community center also houses Valley Community Church, which holds weekly worship services, Bible studies, and Sunday school. “Church is my life,” Eddie says. “But my hope is in Christ Jesus, God’s son—not in a denomination.”
A Faith that Heals
Eddie’s relationship with the Lord wasn’t always in the place it is today. It took many different experiences throughout the decades to bring him there.
Growing up, Eddie was the oldest of three boys. His dad left when he was very young. His mom got sick about the same time Eddie stopped going to school and started shining shoes. “I had to go out and work to bring food in and pay rent,” Eddie says. “I had to earn the money because my mother couldn’t.”
Some people from a local church found out that Eddie’s mom was sick, so they stepped in to help. “That’s when I first knew about Jesus,” Eddie says. “I didn’t go to school, but I went to church.” At age 15, Eddie made the decision to accept Christ into his heart. “The Lord saved me and filled me with the Holy Ghost. And that’s his spirit in me,” he says. “From that moment, I knew there was a God.”
Even though Eddie knew there was a God, he says there were times he “backslid,” especially when he was in his twenties. “I was drinking, gambling, chasing girls. I tried it all. I tried to get away from him, but he let me know.” In 1955, Eddie’s appendix burst. “I swelled up like a dead dog—stinkin’. I was supposed to die,” he says. “I knew God meant business.” After that, Eddie told the Lord he’d stop doing the things he had been doing and commit his life to the spirit inside him. And the rest is history.
The Shining Servant
The Eddie Davis Community Center got its name from the man who has, for years, helped those in need throughout the Valley Junction neighborhood by delivering food baskets—starting at about a dozen in the 1960s to more than 500 by the 1990s. To this day, he still canvases the neighborhood on a three-wheel bike with baskets filled with food for people in need.
It’s the same man who was pastor at Prayer of Faith Church of God in Christ when the Valley Junction Residential Association began operating a food pantry there and making plans for a new community center in 1991.
And it’s the same man who continues to share Christ’s love with people from his humble shoe shine shop in downtown Des Moines. “I meet everybody here,” Eddie says. “I meet people a lot of pastors would never meet. I’m in the best spot in town to talk about Jesus.”
Eddie has faith that talking to people really will make a difference. “I’m trying to change the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ—that’s the only thing that will change the world. It changed me. It can change anybody.”
The difference Eddie has made isn’t hard to spot. “If anyone talks to Eddie Davis, they will see and hear his faith and his belief in the Bible and in God interwoven through the conversation,” says Councilman Parks. “He encourages everyone without exception.”
Margaret Spriggs, an 83-year-old member of Eddie’s church, agrees. “When you get depressed, he calls, he comes and talks, and he brings food over,” she says. “He tries to keep you encouraged and everything. He’s very good to the people.”
Leaps of Faith
When Eddie’s not talking to other people, he talks to God. “I pray all the time—even when I’m sitting here,” he says. “I pray without ceasing.” And he’s always ready to share a verse with any visitor. He grabs the Bible off the stand beside his pulpit and pulls out a magnifying glass to read the small print. “Psalm 34:17,” he reads. “The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles.”
He pauses for a moment to let the words sink in. “That’s why I cry to the Lord,” he says with a confident nod. “He can do all things.” Eddie knows firsthand just what the Lord can do. He and others involved in the Valley Junction Residential Association took a leap of faith in the mid-1990s when they decided to open the Eddie Davis Community Center. And again in 1999 when they took on a $350,000 mortgage and remodeling loan to reclaim a severely damaged warehouse and turn it into a full-service community center. Skeptics thought they were crazy. “I don’t put my trust in man,” Eddie says. “I put my trust in the righteousness of God.”
The center’s debt was paid off in July 2006.
Eddie’s ministry reaches far beyond the Des Moines area. The piles of shoes warping the shelves in his shop aren’t for sale. He collects them for people in need, often donating them to disaster relief efforts in other areas of the country. He still travels around the United States sharing the message of Christ’s saving grace. “I’m not as young as I used to be,” he says with a childlike grin. “It takes a lot out of you, but it’s worth it all.”
Even at 94, Eddie’s not afraid of dying. “I’m looking to go to heaven. That’s where I’m looking,” he says. “I’m happy in Christ Jesus. I’m in him and he’s in me. I’m looking to die and live again—forever.”
Eddie has shined a lot of shoes since 1921. But even more impressive is the number of lives he’s touched through his ministry. He says his business is not about the money—it’s about the people. “God loved people. He sent his son, and his son went through worse things than I went through. But he beat it. That’s why I can be free. That’s why I can love everybody. That’s why I’m alive.”
I asked Eddie what he would do if he had one day left to live. His answer is simple: “Like I live every day.”
