Zeriah K. Folston
[MY DAD] taught me to just be a lover of people. Everyone deserves compassion and love. - Zeriah K. Folston
Passion for People Behind Zeriah K. Folston
Story By:
Nikki J. Davis
W
hether it correlates to his job as Interim Director of Equity and Inclusion for the City of Gainesville, or his personal life, Zeriah K. Folston has basically lived the words he can still hear his grandfather’s deep, manly voice asking, “There are three things God cares about. Do you know what they are?” While he didn’t the first time he was asked — reciting a slough of the typical answers from love to peace to faith to friendship
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— the words his grandfather answered have become his mantra: “People. People. People.”
Zeriah grew up in Alachua County, graduating from P.K. Yonge High School, and continuing on to get his undergraduate degree from the University of Florida and master’s degree from the University of Central Florida. The degrees were stones to strengthen his path of helping those people, people, people his grandfather spoke of and parents demonstrated. But as with anyone in the line of success, it’s
not always easy. In fact, Folston will tell you about it. About growing up with holes in the ceiling. Water leaking through the roof. The toilet pipes leaving a residue of rust regardless of how often they were washed. Carpet that wasn’t really supposed to be the color it appeared.
If you add in a father who was a drug and alcohol user, it could lead to the defeat of a childhood. But, instead, it led Zeriah to focus on the two people in life who have inspired him the most. “My dad went from being a heavy drug and
alcohol user, to finding Christ, to joining the Army, to becoming a pharmacist,” Zeriah said. “And at that time, he was one of the few people of color to graduate from the University of Florida’s Pharmacy school. He set an example. And then he became a pastor and he taught me to just be a lover of people. Everyone deserves compassion and love.”
His mother was defining in his life. It was his mother, he will tell you, who washed dishes and later worked in the anesthesiology department at Alachua General Hospital, to help her husband at-
