Bruce Baldwin of South Philadelphia dedicates his life to helping the neighbors on 7th Street

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) – You may have never heard his name, but Bruce Baldwin is royalty on 7th Street in South Philadelphia.

“We respect Mayor Kenney, but we consider him (Baldwin) mayor on 7th Street,” said Bernadette Wells, a lifelong friend.

“Mayor” is a title that the 64-year-old has earned with decades of work in his community, much of it through the Ford PAL Recreation Center

“It’s a blessing because a lot of people need someone in their lives to give them hope and love. He’s there for them,” said Officer Joseph Ellerby, who is assigned to the PAL Center.

Since the pandemic, Baldwin has organized food gifts COVID-19, testing for the neighborhood, and two weeks ago offered 200 bicycles and scooters to children in the neighborhood.

Now synonymous with respect, his name used to strike fear in the neighborhood.

“Quite interesting as children, we used to run away from him,” Wells said.

“I’m cut from the same cloth that other young people are out on the street,” said Baldwin, who is now president of the Seventh Community Street Civic Association.

He was in prison and was released from prison for a decade at the age of 17, but the tragedy changed his life.

“I went to the state prison, I lost my brother to AIDS, HIV and I wasn’t home,” he said.

He started writing behind bars.

“When they robbed us of our dignity and took us away from home,” he said, reading one of his poems.

Writing became his way out and the way he processed his emotions. Now, he honors his neighbors. He wrote 4,000 poems, including one for each member of his dying community.

“The hardest word I ever said was to say goodbye to my child,” he wrote of a 16-year-old girl who died in her neighborhood.

For 30 years, all of Baldwin’s work has focused on a few blocks on 7th Street, but his coverage goes so far because of all the people he helped.

“The reason this community means so much to me is because I took out a lot initially. That’s what happened. So I had to go back,” he said.