Comment on Freddie Gage, Houston teen gang leader turned fiery evangelist, dies at 81

The Rev. Freddie Gage, a one-time switchblade-toting Houston youth gang leader and drug addict who embraced religion to become one of the leading Baptist evangelists of the late 20th century, died Friday at age 81. [...] only to Billy Graham, Freddie Gage was undoubtedly the most successful evangelist of the '50s, '60s and '70s. The evangelist's career included 1,350 crusades, 3,000 appearances in schools, 300 appearances in prisons and jails and 500 speeches before civic groups. Reared in a tough neighborhood on Houston's north side, the son of a hard-living Port of Houston worker, Gage had developed a drug habit and assumed leadership of a neighborhood gang while still a teen. In his 1970 autobiography, "Pulpit in the Shadows," Gage described his grilling by a Houston police detective, a man "gaunt and bony with flaring ears and the doleful features of a tired foxhound." Freddie Gage became the "underground preacher," proselytizing prostitutes, pimps and other social outcasts in a ministry that, like his book, became known as "Pulpit in the Shadows." Gage's ministry and his reputation grew, expanding his audience to a broader cross-section of the community. Always theatrical, Gage installed a portable speaker on his altar, prowling the church aisles, microphone in hand, to exhort his congregation.