CORRY SANDERS
(Photo courtesy WPXI-TV)
by Christian Morrow, Courier Staff Writer
In January 2016, Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala wrote Corry Sanders to inform him that even though he’d won a seat on the McKeesport Council the previous November, he could not be sworn-in because he had pleaded no contest to drug charges 23 years earlier.
Earlier this month he wrote another letter urging the state pardon board to grant him a pardon because of the exemplary life of hard work and community service he’s led since his release in 1997—and on Sept. 11, they did—unanimously. Only Gov. Tom Wolf’s signature remains to make it official.
“That (Zappala’s letter) caught their eye,” Sanders told the New Pittsburgh Courier in a Sept. 16 interview. “Mr. Zappala didn’t know me at the time, but he got to know me as more than just a name on a piece of paper. When he learned about everything I was doing in the community, he told me to stay patient and that he’d like to work with me.”
And if that irony weren’t poetic enough, Sanders now works for the D.A.’s office as a member of the Mon Valley Diversity and Inclusion Oversight Commission and as a community specialist for Center for Victims. And of course, he still operates his barber shop, his touchstone to the community and to the youth he works to help better themselves.
“All you have to do is learn a person, and you can teach from that,” he said. “Now I’m at the Center for Victims and I’m advocating for people on all levels. I had to take about 45 different tests to do this—I had to learn about trauma, about stress, and I help people look at things through a different lens.”
Sanders said that if it weren’t for his past, his mistakes and ups and downs, he probably couldn’t do what he has done.
“Sometimes you pray for God to take away something that’s going wrong. But what you really have to pray for is the strength to endure it,” he said. “Because once you’ve gotten through it, around it or over it, you are stronger for it, mentally, physically and spiritually.”
So, does that mean Sanders will try to reclaim his McKeesport Council seat?
“Oh yeah, I’ll run again—110 percent,” he said. “The attorney for the pardon board recommended I do that, so did the members. They said I should go and claim what was taken from me. To hear that from them was very powerful.”
But Sanders told the Courier that because of the help and support he’s received and the people he’s met, he’s looking beyond a Council seat.
“There are so many,” he said. “The Lt. Governor (John Fetterman) was one of my earliest supporters when he was Braddock mayor (he now sits on the pardon board), my pastor Dr. William Curtis, Tracey McCants Lewis when she was at Duquesne University Law School, Judge Dwayne Woodruff and his wife, Joy, Judge Joe Williams, state Reps. Austin Davis, Ed Gainey and Jake Wheatley, police, U.S. Marshals. I even got support from Philadelphia and (Washington) D.C. God has protected me and surrounded me with protection. It’s been quite a journey.”
As to what he’s looking at politically beyond regaining his Council seat, Sanders was cryptic.
“I’m chewing on some things right now—taking giant baby steps,” he said. “I’ll let you know. But this is way bigger than a Mc-Keesport thing.”
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