I'm Alive Because I Didn't Die: The Story of My Friend John
By Jeff Massie
Glean Up Program Manager
Charity usually comes in one of three stages. Relief, recovery, or development. When working with the homeless, it is so easy to get trapped in the relief stage because the need for relief is great. Whether it is a hot meal, a bed for the night, or some warm clothes, they are usually just temporary relief. While these services are necessary and do help many people, we at The Field’s Edge are trying to focus on the recovery and development side. This means rather than casting a wide net to meet many relief needs, we are focusing on individuals and going deeper to begin recovery and development. Our Glean Up program does just that.
Glean Up is a work-first work program that creates low barrier employment to the homeless in the form of litter control paired with personalized case management to get them on the road to recovery and development. Our people earn dignified money picking up litter and work towards anything from getting ID’s, to further employment, to social security retirement benefits. The goal is to not just meet a temporary need but to empower them to better their living situation.
My friend John Soper is a great example of someone who has moved from relief to recovery and development. I met John in October 2020 when he joined the Glean Up crew. John was staying in a house that is not fit for habitation and he was in danger of losing it because he couldn’t pay his taxes. He has since graduated from the program and came by our office yesterday to tell his story. The more he talked the more I felt like I was sitting on a bus stop bench, eating a box of chocolates, being drawn in by a Forest Gump sequel.
Scene: Feather floats in from sky and Lands on John’s Covid mask
John was born in Midland, TX on April 26, 1950 to his loving mother, Bertie Estelle Wilson Soper, but he wouldn’t stay there long. When he was about 6, his mother married his stepfather, Robert Soper Jr, and John became a self-described “Army Brat”, emphasis on the “BRAT”. From that time, John lived on bases in Texas, Virginia, France, California, and finally West Point in New York where his adopted father was a professor. John also worked at the prestigious West Point but not as a professor. He described it as “running” a lawn mower because at this point in his life, he was running everywhere. “To work, to lunch, back to work, and then home after work”. If he was going somewhere, he was running!
John graduated high school in 1969 and then he switched from running to skiing. He skied the slopes at West Point so much that they gave him a job. He recalls skiing all night with friends and co-workers preparing the slopes for the next day. From there, John went on to work several different jobs including head cashier at a service station, contractor work, trolling fisherman, roustabout, and welder in a shipyard. Then John got married and joined the Air Force to work on planes. John enjoyed being in the Air Force, but his wife was not a fan. John said one day she came to eat lunch with him looking the most beautiful she has ever looked. Then that evening when he got home, she and their daughter were gone and “she left nothing in the house except the dirt on the floor”. She even took his uniforms. John is still not really sure what happened or why. He thinks she left with a band to try and be a rockstar. A year later, John was getting out of the Air Force and his wife returned for a while but didn’t stick around long. She ended up returning to New York with their daughter Chrissy who later became anorexic and bulimic. John sold everything he had and used all his savings to pay for her treatment but Chrissy eventually died and John ended up homeless for the first time. John said he has felt homeless ever since.
John got himself a van and was living on the beach in Grand Isle, LA. He recalls fishing one day when he was befriended by three young women. He didn’t know it at the time but two of them were daughters of politicians and one was the daughter of Carlos Marcello, an American crime boss in the New Orleans crime family. John said he went fishing on Carlos’ boat one time and he joked that he is thankful he didn’t go “swimming with the fishes”. John said he was also homeless on the rough streets of New Orleans and doesn’t know how he is still living. He said, “I’m alive because I just didn’t die.”
John returned to Midland from time to time and eventually returned for good. He attended Midland College where he perused a myriad of interest and obtained an associate’s degree in general studies. According to his transcript, he took classes there between the summer of 78 and fall of 2004 and completed 141 hours with a 3.62 GPA. “I’m a lifetime learner” he says.
John teaching us how Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth in the third century BCE
Fast forward to October 13th, 2020 when I met him. John had worked several different jobs including handyman, welder, property manager, tutor, inventor, and technical advisor. He also helped take care of his grandfather and later his mother. Before his mother died, she gave him the house he lives in now when, due to its condition, it became uninsurable and pretty much no longer meant for human habitation. The house is in rough shape, but John is pretty proud of the metal roof he had put on it 10 years ago. John had since stopped working, gone through his savings, and was living on $300 a month from a pension along with the help of a credit card. He used his bicycle to get around town and ate at soup kitchens and the Salvation Army to try and stretch the money he did have.
I could tell right away that John was very intelligent and had a different way of seeing the world. He always recognized that each day was a blessing, and he was quick to bless you and yours. Along with John’s associate degree, he is self-taught in many other subjects. He could twist up my brain with complex math formulas he had been contemplating and entertain me with an interesting story. He once told me about how sine and cosine were developed to help armies figure out how tall to build their ladders when attacking a city wall. He made trigonometry sound interesting! John could talk your ear off with all the knowledge he has to share. He has an interest in teaching and I could tell education is something he is passionate about
John turned 70 in April and one of his goals when he started the program was to get social security retirement benefits. He said he had waited till he turned 70 because he heard doing so would get him the maximum amount. Of course, here we were months after his birthday and he still hadn’t applied. I find that many of our friends end up living without because they don’t know where to start or the task is so great that they give up. Much of their time is spent thinking about what they need right now. For example, where will I sleep tonight, where will I go to the bathroom in the morning, where will I get a meal or money. It is difficult to think about long term tasks when you can barely think past your next meal. Many times, our friends need someone to walk alongside them through these processes that could take weeks or months.
That’s where the case management comes in. Yes, we put John to work earning some dignified income but that is nothing compared to what we accomplished with his case management. Within a couple of weeks, we had applied for his benefits, Medicare, a social security card, and were making plans for him to get his house back in livable shape. We had an appointment to talk to the social security administration on Nov 20th, just to make sure they had everything they needed. As John continued to work Glean Up, we patiently waited for this appointment not really knowing what to expect.
Finally, the phone call came. The conversation went quite well and by the time we hung up, John had been approved to receive monthly benefits plus a large sum for back pay starting the next week. We were ecstatic! Success! John was set! Thanksgiving came the next week and so did his first direct deposit. So much to be thankful for. John paid off his house taxes, paid off his credit card, got his truck running that had been sitting for a year, is working to get his house repaired, and is thinking about going back to college to continue his education along with many other self-taught studies. In less than two months, John earned over $600 working on the Glean Up crew and thanks to a few hours spent working personalized case management, his living situation has significantly improved, and I have a new friend.
Working in this ministry has its ups and downs. Many times, success stories are few and far between. Thankfully, as my friend says, God has called us to be faithful, not successful. But when we are faithful, sometimes God gives us someone like John to bless our lives.