Gwinnett man is MVP to county, his church

Stamper, 46, is well-known at the county headquarters and in his Buford community. He is the pastor at a church in one of the county’s poorest neighborhoods, where he turned a dilapidated building into a youth center.

“He’s a wonderful guy,” said Edward Walters, a minister at Stamper’s church. “He empowers the people in the community he’s from. They love him.”

Stamper got into custodial work after a couple other jobs didn’t stick.

After high school in Buford, Stamper became a welder — just like the older brother who raised him. But five years at the job was about all he could stomach.

“I hated the smoke,” he said. “It wasn’t good. I’d come home filthy, dirty and smoky every day.”

Hired by Gwinnett in 1989, Stamper said he never felt embarrassed to be a custodian. But he sometimes felt the lack of respect from others around him.

“Sometimes people will look at you because you’re cleaning, [and think] that it’s not a job worthy of respect,” said Stamper.

Stamper conveys the opposite to his staff of custodians, who supervise county jail inmates in cleaning the government building each day.

“They are as important as anybody else in this facility,” Stamper said of his staff of 10. “And they are to carry themselves that way, and should expect to be treated that way.”

That attitude has helped shape the attitudes of others around them, Stamper said.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Stamper is one of the most well-liked men in the Gwinnett Justice and Administration Center, which houses 900 county employees.

“He’s just one of those people that has a really positive effect on people,” said Gwinnett District Attorney Danny Porter, whom Stamper visited in the hospital last year when Porter had neck surgery.

“I’ve never seen him be unpleasant to anybody,” Porter said. “He’s always in a great mood.”

Stamper’s popularity and his ability to lift the role and expectations of his custodians were cited when Stamper was given the county’s MVP award earlier this year.

Stamper moved to Buford from Chattanooga when he was 7 years old. His mother had just died of cancer, and his older half-brother was going to take care of him.

He never had a relationship with his father, whom he only met once and who has since passed away.

In Buford, Stamper’s brother, 16 years his senior, took on the role of his father. “Most people in Buford thought he was my dad, but he wasn’t,” Stamper said.

As Stamper became a teenager, he found another father figure, Richard Sampson, the pastor of Faith Free Full Gospel Church, a church so small it held services in a shed.

Stamper became a minister at 21, and took over as pastor when Sampson retired in 1997.

Soon, he set his sights on a rundown gymnasium across the street from the church.

Stamper, now married and with four children of his own, wanted to turn the gym into a youth center for neighborhood children.

He got the city’s permission to use the building, and renovated it with about $500,000 in grants and $300,000 in in-kind donations.

“It went from an eyesore to something special in the community,” Stamper said.

The center hosts a variety of events and activities. Last year, it held its first Thanksgiving dinner.

To Stamper’s surprise, about 250 people showed up — a testament to his ability to bring the community together, Walters said.

The center was hosting another holiday dinner this year, and Stamper hoped to repeat the success of last year.

“It was just so good to see the whole community come out. It touched my heart,” he said.