Adversity + Resilience & Determination = Opportunity

So here it is, the spring of 1983, and my mother and father had gotten a divorce. This will plunge me in greater depths of darkness during this time. My mother was abusing so much alcohol and marijuana at this point she was getting in some really bad relationships with some very bad people. There was this group of bikers that at one point came to my house while I was home alone and stole all of my food from the freezer that was located in the garage. She would come home at all times of the day.

My mother and father had equal rights of shared custody of me on weekends. I remember one weekend when my stepfather and I came back to drop me off from his visitation in where he lived in Tampa. He just stayed in the car and said his goodbyes and he drove off. My mother was inside. But this next 24 hours will turn very tragic for me and plunge even deeper into darkness. When I went in to see where my mother was, I saw her laying upside down on the bed and turned over onto the pillow that she was laying on. She asked me where was my father, and I told her that he was gone already. But when she lifted up the pillow, the thing I saw will forever be ingrained in my head. She had a 32 caliber revolver under the pillow and if my stepfather set foot in that very bedroom to drop me off, he would have been dead. I ran to my room and cried !! Remember this date September 9, 1983. This is the afternoon that my father dropped me off back home and my mother was waiting to kill him and maybe even me. But she was so high on marijuana and alcohol that thank God that she never pulled the trigger!

So her biker boyfriend came over to pick her up. He never came in. But in an alcohol and drug-fueled rage she asked me to come out of my room and she was saying some nasty things, then she proceeded to throw a glass at me while I was standing at my bedroom door and said that I won’t see her in the morning. That was at 5 pm on September 9, 1983. At 2 am on September 10, 1983, she took that very same 32 caliber pistol and put it to her right side of her head below the right ear and committed suicide. My worst days were yet to come. Somehow my father found out and came straight over. The sheriff was already there at the house with me, but they couldn’t really tell me anything until my father got there. So I was in a state of shock.

By this time my father was dating someone that will soon become my stepmother. She was there with my father when he got the call from the sheriff’s office to back to Lakeland. So this week was going to be the worst week of my life. I was thinking about just in January I was adopted and now my mother had just gotten a divorce and then just committed suicide.

My head was pulled in every direction. I was trying to put on a brave face, but I was torn up inside so badly.

I had to go through my mother’s viewing and funeral at this early age of my life. I told my father because I was in the Boy Scouts at the time that the best way to honor my mother was to go through the viewing and the funeral was to wear my Boy Scout uniform during both services. Seeing my mother laying in a casket and seeing where the bullet hole in her right side of her head haunted me for many years. I saw many family members that never knew that I had during this time. The funeral was done and I went back home with my father.

So in this same month, September of 1983 on the 20th, my father got married again to Mary E. Mayfield. She was also divorced and was seeing my father for some time. They had a wedding in a friend’s home in Tampa. So the big question came to pass, what do we do now as a new blended family? Well, the 1st step was moving into my stepmother’s condo in Tampa. She lived with her two daughters Marissa and Pam. So we didn’t put the house up for sale, we just packed up my things and moved to Tampa.

Tampa was very different for me. Within the very first weeks I was living there I remember a painting that hung in my bedroom and it was a picture of a woman. But this woman in this picture was in one night was going to terrorize my very soul. When I was going to sleep one night, this picture of this woman was turning herself into my mother’s face, and the terror began when her face was running bloodied and melting the picture I screamed bloody murder in the middle of the night. And this was only the start of my terror.

When I was going to elementary school in Tampa, none of the special education teachers could connect with me on a human level. They told my parents that they could see that something very traumatic happened in my life. My parents did tell the teachers that my mother had just committed suicide just a few weeks ago. The teachers truly tried to help me. But six months into living in Tampa, I said it would be best if we all moved to Lakeland. Both Marissa and Pam didn’t like the idea but understood it. So I only was in Tampa for six months and was moving back to Lakeland. So here I was going into the real tough time in my life.

Remember what I said about going to three different elementary schools in less than two years —this is where this part of my life is starting to take shape. And remember Patty Harville? She was going to be my special education teacher at all of these schools, Medulla, Scott Lake, Sikes Elementary. And she would go on to be my teacher at a special education school called Roosevelt Vo-Tech in Lake Wales, FL. So I bounced around from one school to the next. Each year was harder than the last year. I was really trying to fit into society so I tried my hand in soccer one year. I loved it!! But we lost every game that year. I was 11 at the time. So here I was going into my middle school career. I was going to go from Scott Lake elementary to Southwest Junior High School. This would be a defining time for me.

This is where the school board was going to let me what is called mainstreamed into other classes. So I was going to be in my special education class for 5 periods day starting out in my 7th-grade year. This year I was going try my hand into football. I tried out and didn’t succeed. But times in 7th grade for me were very tough. There was this one time I remember that another kid came up behind me in the classroom before class started and put a chokehold on me and made me pass out. My parents were furious and the school board never expelled or prosecuted the kid for what he did to me. This led me into the darkness once again.

That year came went quickly for me. I was fighting a battle for my very soul at home in this critical moment of my life. I was getting more emotionally unstable at home.

I was trying so hard to fit in at school but nothing seemed to work. So my mother put me on a little league football team since I didn’t make my middle school team. It was the Lakeland Gators. I loved it, I played running back, wide receiver, safety, and quarterback. I played one season only. So 8th grade was starting and it was going to be different for me. I was told that this year I was going to be mainstreamed even more by taking fewer special education classes this year. I was going to be 4 periods this year mainstreamed into regular classes. That year came went quickly for me. I was fighting a battle for my very soul at home in this critical moment of my life. I was getting more emotionally unstable at home. My parents didn’t know it, but I was considering taking my life because I felt so alone and isolated from my family and friends. So the year was 1988, I was going into my last year at Southwest. And I was working at my first job. I was working at McDonald’s! I was hired to work the cash register, drive-thru, and maintenance. So I worked at McDonald’s after school. I was doing better in society as a whole at this point in time. I was making money and learning how to understand the business world. I would go on to work for McDonald’s for 3 and a half years.

So it is now the fall of 1989, I was going to go to the school that I mentioned earlier, Roosevelt Vo-Tech. This was my 9th-grade year. And yes Patty Harville was at Roosevelt with me again as my teacher at Roosevelt. I had to get up at 5 am to be ready for the bus to pick me up at 6:00-6:15 am. My first year was ok. I wasn’t in any regular classes and going to a regular school. But it was ok. I tried out for the track and cross country teams and basketball while I was at Roosevelt. I was only allowed to be in track and cross country because I was going to be too old for basketball.

My sophomore year was pretty good. I was nominated by the school to take part in a drug conference in Atlanta, Ga. I was there for a week. And did I love it. And now it is my junior year and before it even started I was faced with a choice. The school board said that if I did complete a pre-requirement of my high school credits to have math done by this year, I was not going to graduate from school in my senior year. So here comes summer school !!! It was done at Roosevelt and it was only six weeks. And can you believe that I passed summer school?

So going into my junior year I was allowed to go to 4 periods and then do a program that was called On The Job Training (OTJT) and they offered many different companies in which to work for. I chose Publix Supermarket. While I was doing this I was of course involved with my track and cross country activities. Plus I was also going to be in my high school play for that year too. This was also the year that I have to take summer school in June to have the hopes of passing with all 24 credits when I graduate from school as a senior for the class of 1991.