Voyage from Georgia to Kate’s Place and Manna

On April 21, ten interns graduated from our PECO Veterans Training and Employment Program. Thomas Walker was one of them, and will leave the program to work with Manna.

Thomas Walker was born in Richland, Georgia. He was very young when his father deserted his family. At nine, he was kidnapped by his paternal aunt and brought to Philadelphia, where several members of his father’s family lived. His mother had no idea what had transpired and concluded her son had drowned in a nearby swamp. His abrupt removal from his mother “left a hole in my heart,” remembers Thomas.

Thomas lived with his aunt, and contact with his alcoholic father were limited to “discipline” visits, severe and terrifyingly abusive. He worked hard at being good, because he believed good behavior was the key to his return to his mother. In middle school, drawn by the security of the gang family and believing it would protect him against this father’s abuse, he became involved in a neighborhood gang. But when he was accosted in a stairwell by a gun-wielding gang member at Overbrook High School, his aunt pulled him out of school. 

He was sent to an Indiana Job Corps program, where he completed his GED, and was certified in house-wiring. He was accepted into an electronic maintenance program, but forced to drop it when his father confiscated his tuition checks. He confronted his father, and his father pulled a gun on him. Thomas fled the house. For three years, he wandered between homes of friends, family, the shelter on Ridge Avenue, and park benches. He held down two part-time jobs. He began using drink and drugs.

The high point of Thomas’s life came when he joined the Marines, serving one year in radio/telephone operation because of his training in electronics. But he returned home only to re-enter his past: his old life, his family issues, his “friends” and addictions. Six years later, he bottomed out. “I felt like my life was falling apart.”

Thomas went back to Georgia, searching for his mother. He found his maternal grandmother and learned that his mother had remarried and now lived in Germany. They reconnected by phone. He lived with his grandmother and cared for her needs until she died. Homeless once more, he returned to Philadelphia.

Thomas lived as a “functional addict,” working full time until his addiction brought him to a low point. “I had to change my life or lose it.” He walked more than ten miles to reach the VA hospital, then spent nine months in in-patient therapy working on the issues that led to his years of self-medication. Though his road to recovery was sometimes bumpy, it was steady. He never returned to substance abuse.

Thomas was hired to oversee the maintenance at Greenleaf Apartments, but stressful working conditions and years of abuse took its toll in a flare-up of Crohns disease. Shortly afterward, Thomas rented his car to an acquaintance who used it in multi-state crimes. Though the driver testified that Thomas had no knowledge of these crimes, Thomas was nevertheless still charged as a co-conspirator. He was imprisoned one year; on parole for three. It took years to address the legal ramifications of damage to his name. After some time in shelters and other residences, the VA referred him to Project HOME.

He now lives at Kate’s Place and interns at Manna, where he assembles food trays, packages them, and loads them on trucks for dispersal to the needy. This video (also on our blog) talks about his life and his intern experience, made possible by Project Home’s Veteran’s Training and Employment program, sponsored by PECO. After graduation, Manna hired Thomas as a driver delivering meals to the needy.

Thomas overcame great difficulty to become whole. He is an extraordinary member of our community: conscientious, capable, willing, communicative, and trustworthy. His powerful story of coming home again is just one of the many we witness. Consider hiring a Project Home worker through our employment program.. Contact Nitasha Rivera: 215-232-7272 x 3088 or [email protected].