City renames street in honor of late Tacoma bishop Curtis E. Montgomery
The late Hilltop bishop Curtis E. Montgomery doesn’t need a street named after him to be remembered. But for a community shaped by his decades of service, renaming a stretch of South G Street was a fitting way to honor a man whose influence stretched beyond the church doors.
Saturday, the City of Tacoma officially renamed the portion of South G Street between South 19th and South 21st Street as Curtis E. Montgomery Street.
The idea to rename the street in his honor came to Montgomery’s granddaughter Sharyce Martin immediately after waking up one day earlier this year.
“I woke up and I heard the voice, ‘Turn G Street to C.E. Montgomery,” she said. “And I knew that wasn’t me. I don’t know how to explain it, but I knew that wasn’t Sharyce.”
She kept it in the back of her mind as a possibility, but didn’t think it would work out until she blurted out the idea to her sister, Antoinette Griffin, who loved the plan.
Naming a street isn’t easy. It took months of planning and organizing the community. The sisters had to get the approval of 67% of all the property owners abutting the roadway and 50% of property owners within 500 feet of the proposal.
They spent days going door to door asking permission from neighbors and locating property owners, sometimes taking off work to do so.
After all their hard work, the City Council approved their street designation at the final meeting of the year. And as luck would have it, the renaming ceremony was scheduled on Montgomery’s birthday: Dec. 27. He would have been 93 years old.
After settling in Tacoma with his wife, Elinor, Montgomery started Greater Christ Temple Church in 1959 and served as its pastor for 50 years. What began as a storefront church in an old grocery store blossomed into a ministry at its current location in Hilltop and eventually a $3 million youth center across the street.
He retired in 2008 and later passed away at age 82 in 2015.
Montgomery is remembered for guiding his congregation through the civil rights era of the 1960s as well as drug and gang warfare in the 1980s. He led a lively Pentecostal worship style, sometimes speaking in tongues and giving pop quizzes on the Bible, according to previous reporting from The News Tribune.
He had a talent for relating to people. No one was a stranger to him, his son John Montgomery said.
“With this street being renamed in his honor, it’s just the tip of the iceberg in regards to the love he has and the love that people had for him,”John Montgomery said. “We’re just really excited and we’re really pleased and honored that our dad is being recognized.”
Hundreds of people attended the renaming ceremony at Greater Christ Temple Church Saturday morning, many sporting buttons with the late pastor’s smiling portrait.
Spirits were high in celebration of Montgomery’s life.
Speakers took to the pulpit to share their memories of the late bishop, including Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards, who first attended the church decades ago and knew Montgomery personally.
One of Woodard’s first accomplishments as mayor was overseeing the renaming of the East 34th Street Bridge in honor of former mayor Harold Moss in 2019. Saturday, just four days before she leaves office, her overseeing the renaming of G Street will be one of her last.
The ceremony was followed by a procession to the new street sign at the intersection of South 21st Street, which was unveiled by Montgomery family members to wide applause.
“When they see Curtis E. Montgomery on that sign on the street, they’re going to ask ‘Who is this person?’” Antoinette Griffin said. “And based on all of what he has been able to accomplish with his life here on Earth, we’re going to make sure that his legacy is passed on for generations to come.”
