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Former homeless tell their stories to Brentsville High students
Neither John Harrison or JoAnn Jackson had the aura of a commanding politician on the stump Tuesday afternoon at Brentsville District High School.
Harrison stood in the auditorium clutching a microphone about half the size of his forearm with both hands, occasionally letting go with his left hand as he stepped a foot or two in one direction or the other.
When Jackson reentered the stage for a Q&A session with the audience, she often deferred to Harrison, standing behind him and chiming in every so often with a joke or a couple of facts.
The two Washington, D.C. residents were not elected officials or CEOs of corporations there to impress people. Rather, they were just two people there on behalf of the National Coalition for the Homeless. Both had graduated from high school a generation ago but ultimately fell on tough times.
Real tough times, like being molested in a homeless shelter and waking up on the street to the sound of a glass bottle shattering six inches away.
“Homelessness can be something you never escape for some reason,” Harrison said.
Jackson and Harrison came to Nokesville this week to talk to students about what it is like to live on the streets of the nation's capital without a place to call home.
At 51, Harrison called himself, “one of the lucky ones.”
He had started out as a suburban kid who worked his way up to middle-management after high school.
But he lost his job, his house burned down and after his Honda broke down twice, he spent his last $100 to have the car towed to a shopping center parking lot.
Then, he came back to his car one day and found a note on it stating that his car would soon be taken away.
“And that was it. I was homeless,” he said.
“Looking back, that's all I was doing. I was taking care of myself,” said Harrison. “I wasn't really taking care of anybody else but myself. So guess what? There wasn't [a crowd] of people there to take care of me when I fell on hard times. That was a very tough lesson.”
On the streets of the District, he woke up one day as a bottle broke. In front of him, an 80-year-old man was stealing his shoes.
“'This is how you thank me?'” Harrison recalled the man saying. The thief, a veteran, indicated he was angry that he had fought in four wars while someone like Harrison was jobless and on the street.
Harrison said he told the man that he did have a job but needed his shoes to get there.
Many people view the homeless in one of two ways, Harrison said.
For some, the homeless are completely invisible. But inside stores or restaurants, they stick out like a sore thumb as they carry around their possessions.
The 61-year-old Jackson said her misfortune started at a young age as she was sexually molested for eight years in her youth.
She turned to crack and alcohol to escape depression, but the drugs just dragged her further from reality.
“[I] didn't want to think about anything but drugs,” she said. Jackson added that she lost her concept of what is important, like paying rent on time.
On the streets and alone in her 40s, the demons from her youth attacked once more as she was molested again, this time in a homeless shelter.
That's when she said it hit her that she was totally abandoned.
At age 49 though, she decided to put her life back on track.
As of this Saturday, she will have been clean and sober for 12 years. Her granddaughter, who grew up surrounded by drugs and alcohol, has never even smoked a single cigarette, Jackson reported, and has given Jackson two great-grandchildren with a third due in June.
Jackson said she has kept an honest and open relationship with her granddaughter. When she's asked, Jackson said she does not dodge questions about drug abuse or how she's lived her life.
The students at Brentsville received the speakers rather warmly, cheering as Harrison sang lyrics he wrote about life on the street and even hollering appreciatively when Jackson mentioned she had received a new watch as a birthday present.
After the presentation, students lined up to talk with Jackson and Harrison, offering hugs and praise for their presentation. Some students also donated money and others signed up as members of the National Coalition for the Homeless.
And to everyone he talked to, Harrison offered what he had: a radiant glow of appreciation.
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