The final meal request of Philip Workman ended up memorializing him in a way he probably never expected to be remembered – as the posthumous provider of pizza meals to thousands of Nashville homeless the day after his death.
Workman was convicted of killing a police officer during the robbery of a Wendy’s restaurant undertaken when he was addicted to drugs . . . and homeless. He asked that his final meal be a vegetarian pizza. Instead of eating it, he wanted the pizza donated to any homeless person located near Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, where he died last Tuesday by state order.
The state wouldn’t honor Workman’s request, so people who felt touched by his unfulfilled gesture of generosity, honored it for him. All day Wednesday, hundreds and hundreds of pizzas rained upon Nashville’s homeless population. The Oasis Center, a teen crisis shelter, received pizzas gifted by a Minnesota radio station and many others from anonymous donors. 150 of the pizzas received by the Rescue Mission came from Donna Spangler and friends.
RIP, Philip Workman. You paid for your crimes. May all your good deeds now be credited into your heavenly account.
Read the Tennessean.com newsblurb that started the pizza party.