Each One Reach One
Wednesday, July 02, 2003
Where Has Everybody Gone?
By Jerry Kirkpatrick, ADOC #165203
It all started when my father killed himself when I was nine years old.
Our family was living in west Phoenix when it happened. I was totally shocked when I was awakened by the Phoenix police telling my mother that my father had killed himself.
I didn’t know what to think of it. I did, however, know my life was changed forever. After that, my older sister dropped out of school, and I simply stopped going altogether.
Until I met a lady named Francine Hardaway. She was the lady who at the time was mentoring my sister Jennifer, who was going to North High School. When Jennifer dropped out of school, Francine told me and my younger sister Amanda that if we wanted help with school, all we had to do was call and ask.
Six months later, we wound up in downtown Phoenix on 2nd Avenue where my mother had started doing drugs openly in front of us. I was in the sixth grade, ready to graduate. When I graduated into the next grade, 7th, I really needed clothes and shoes with no one else to turn to. I then called Francine Hardaway and set up a time for me to meet her at her office in central Phoenix to task for some assistance. I received it.
During that next summer, I had to start doing things I really didn’t enjoy doing, but I had no choice because my mother was not able to feed us. She was spending my father’s Social Security checks on drugs with her boyfriend.
That summer finally ended, and I started the 7th grade with all my new clothes and shoes. I was just making it by when somebody disagreed with the way my mother was doing things and called Child Protective Services. When they came out and made a home visit to the house where we were living, the social worker didn’t approve of with what she had seen. In fact, she gave my mother a fifteen-day limit to get things together: “clean the house and put food in the refrigerator,” or she was losing her children for good.
My mother then decided that the whole world was against her, and nothing that was happening was her fault that things ended up the way they did and there was nothing she could do to change it. She disappeared into the closet for a little “time out” with her friends.
By the end of the fifteen days, I had tried my hardest to straighten things up around the house and put some food in the refrigerator, but it didn’t work. CPS came to my mother’s house and told her that she needed to give her kids to be cared for while she checked herself into a rehab.
My mom of coursed disagreed, and ran with us kids, only during this time Francine was willing to take me into her home and care for me.
About two months later, I was sitting at my tutor’s house studying when the phone rang. Francine called to speak to me, and I instantly knew what was wrong.
Francine had called to tell me that CPS had shown up at my little sister and brothers” school and remanded them into the custody of the state of Arizona. When that happened, I knew then that the rest of my life wasn’t worth a damn, and I didn’t know what to do.
At the time everybody started to notice that I was very depressed and though I should seek some professional help. So I started counseling at Terros. When I started my counseling I felt it was going to be easy, but of course it was not. So I instantly rejected it. I didn’t know how to accept it, or maybe I didn’t want to, but at the time I didn’t know what was the easiest thing to to. So I showed up willing, and soon found out, while on anti-depressant drugs, that the only reason I wouldn’t accept help was because I didn’t trust the person I was about to express all my life’s past to. I learned that trust was something that had to be built upon by both me and the counselor.
One I started gaining trust, I also started doing better, and accepting the fact that my life was going to be led by only one person – and you guessed it, that person was going to be me. But only being twelve years old, I didn’t really know what the hell to do.
I was going to junior high school and doing well, except I found it was hard to learn and fight at the same time, so Francine took me out and put me into a public charter high school called IntelliSchool, skipping my eighth grade year altogether. In IntelliSchool, I found it was easier to learn in a more secure surrounding. Once that was done, my grades made a really big improvement.
At the same time, I was still going to Terros for help, and accepting the fact that the things that happened in my life were not my fault, but just happened. Things in life always happen for a reason, only I couldnpt accept the fact that the reason given to me for my life was that my parents could not care for me the way they intended to.
Amazingly, I graduated from 9th grade with the help of tutoring and counseling. When that happened, everything was good. I went to camp that summer and returned a certified snorkeler, which was the second certificate I had ever received. My first certificate was my certification as a soccer referee, which I held for three straight seasons. I earned $9.00/hr at the age of thirteen!
The summer finally lapsed, and I was ready for the tenth grade.
When I started the next year, it was still at IntelliSchool but at a different location, which would have been fine if it had not been right next door to a mall. I was always leaving school early every day until a call was made to Francine and a school meeting was set.
When the meeting was over, the conclusion was not one I was happy with, until I met with my counselor and she explained to me that maybe it was a good idea. I listened to her, and started a new school the next year – one that was more controlling of me and my time.
When the school year was almost over, one morning my foster father dropped me off and informed me he was on his way to the hospital. He was convinced that he needed to be there, which he wasn’t willing to admit easily because he was an MD himself.
When he checked himself in, he never left, because he had cancer that was not stoppable at all.
After the second funeral in my life, I was again scared and didn’t know what to do. But ironically, after the funeral of my foster father my life really started going well. Francine and I moved from the current residence into a new home in north Phoenix.
I was still attending school and counseling. For fun I was racing BMX and on the skate team for online skating on the weekends.
After about a year more of counseling I quite after five years of attending, because I felt I had overcome all the grief I had been feeling.
So there I was in tenth grade, at the age of 15, thinking everything was fine, when Francine was told that I was not going to be allowed to return because my GPA was not high enough.
I was looking for another school while during the summer I was in contact wth one of the teachers to who taught at my previous school; he told me there was a new charter school opening, and he was going to be working at it. When Francine found out, she enrolled me for the 11th grade.
When the next school year started, I had a friend named David, whom I’ve known all my life, move in with Francine and me. He also enrolled in the same school.
When David and I started school we went, but little did I know everything was going to go to hell for selling drugs. Four months later, David was kicked out of school. When that happened, I felt it was my fault.
Knowing from the start the chances both Francine and I were taking with David, we wre very sad about him leaving, because I had a part in it all. But I kept moving forward doing what I was doing – selling drugs.
Two months later, I transferred to Gateway Community High School, where I could earn college credits and high school credits at the same time.
I started leaving school early to do the things I was doing at the other school, only this time I was also using the drugs I was selling, at the age of nearly seventeen years old. I was not showing up at school at all. I finally got caught in a drug raid at the age of seventeen and was kicked out of that school, too.
When the happened, I was accepted back into IntelliSchool, but about two months into the school year I was kicked out of Francine’s house and into a foster group home.
When that happened, I knew it was all over and started using drugs alll the time, until I ran away from the group home to do what I wanted to do.
Shortly aftward I turned eighteen, after returning downtown doing the very same thing I disposed of at the age of eleven. I started smoking cocaine, and thieving with my mother to support my habit. Shortly after that, I wound up in the county jail, facing three months for shoplifting liquor.
When I was returned back to the city streets, I was right back to the same thing I was arrested for, only much worse. I was in and out of jail for the following six months, until I was arrested on March 18, 2001 for aggravated burglary and sentenced to nine months in the county jail with seven years of I.P. S. probation.
I was released to a rahab on November 11, but it didn’t work out at all, so I returned to the streets a few days later.
I was again back on the streets with yet another rampage of smoking drugs and burglarizing people’s things, until I was in a high speed chase through the city sreets on January 3, 2002 with three new charges – burglary, burglary tools, and criminal damage. I was sentenced to 1.5 years of Department of Corrections time with a release date of April 28, 2003 with six months parole.
My life has always been a life of wondering whether or not I would wake up every day to face the next bunch of tasks, since I was nine years old. But I now know if I do wake up the next day, the only person who can make a difference in that next day is me, but only willingly.
The only question I ask is when and what will life allow me to expect of it. My love and heart goes out to Francine Hardaway wwith these next lines.
Love always, LJ
Misery
Cruel is the life and misery of the street
I’m never knowing whom next I will meet
Or what evil fate awaits me this day.
Full of hatred and deceit,
This forever I shall reap
If I go on living life this way.
Summoned by an evil lore,
I’m led blindly through the dope house door.
I’m seeking the black death that will deaden my pain
I’m a pool of foul reeking blood on the floor
A dying fetus will never know more
As the mother cries out in the rain.
When I awoke I was still lying in my hell
My soul I could not even sell
For I truly wanted to die.
On me damnation has fell
This is only one day, to those who will listen I will tell
I still ask myself – why?
Why didn’t I die?
--Jerry Reed Kirkpatrick, 2002
