A homeless man was crushed by a 5-ton city front loader clearing his tent. Now, he’s transforming lives from beyond the grave

Atlanta —

Marred by a spate of tragedies, mental illness and addiction, Cornelius Taylor’s home for the past two decades oscillated between dark crevices under bridges and feeble tents pitched on cracked pavement in various alcoves of Atlanta.

But Cornelius was on the cusp of overhauling his life. He was engaged to a woman he had rescued from an attack. He got serious about sobering up. And he was searching for the elusive tools needed to look for a job – a birth certificate, a cell phone, a physical address to call home.

Those dreams perished one frigid January morning, when the city tried to demolish a tent encampment ahead of nearby Martin Luther King Jr. Day events. More than a dozen homeless people were about to see their tents destroyed – just steps away from Ebenezer Baptist Ch