By Ken Sury
Harold is thriving today, a testament to his own inner drive aided greatly by his time at Methodist Children’s Home.
The 34-year-old isn’t a typical individual in the Transition Services program. He has worked for the same company in Dallas for eight years and returned to the classroom as a junior at the University of Texas-Dallas working toward a degree in supply chain management and analytics.
Melvin Carter, director of Transition Services at MCH, said Harold’s journey may have begun in survival mode, but that’s not where he is today.
“Harold is not defined by where he started,” Carter said. “He is defined by how he continues to rise.”
From birth, Harold was continually on the move. His biological father was in the Navy and Harold was born in Key West, Florida, then moved to Hawaii. At age 4, his family moved to Lewisville, Texas, and his sister was born soon after.
His father’s heroin abuse already made for a difficult childhood, but Harold’s life took a drastic turn at age 7.
A drunk driver T-boned the car carrying his mother, grandmother, his sister and cousins. His mother suffered the worst with extensive physical injuries and head trauma.
Harold said his biological father used his mother’s accident as grounds for divorce, claiming she was no longer able to care for their children because of the severity of her injuries.
Life with his father proved difficult and traumatic. Harold experienced physical abuse throughout his childhood until age 11, when his father died from a drug overdose. His paternal grandmother passed away shortly thereafter.
Harold and his sister moved in with his father’s oldest brother and his wife, who were in their fifties with grown children. They became reluctant caregivers.
“They were not very kind people,” Harold said. His sister, who was three years younger, was considered more angelic while he was viewed as the troubled child.
“I was emotionally immature,” Harold admitted. “My aunt and uncle had thin patience and the last thing they wanted was to deal with more problems, so they started shipping me off to children’s homes.”
He eventually landed at Waco Center for Youth when he was 13 and spent a year there. “They questioned why I was there because I didn’t seem to have the issues they saw in many of their other residents,” he said.
The Waco Center for Youth counselors helped him greatly and coordinated his move to MCH at age 14 so he wouldn’t have to return to his uncle and aunt.
“Those were the best years of my childhood,” Harold said of MCH. “I’m grateful for having what I would consider a stable life at that point. I was placed in a situation where I was given a room and the freedom to grow.”
He arrived at MCH in 2005. He played flag football and ran track and field. He excelled in the latter, anchoring the relay teams that competed at the state meet.
“Track and field kept me accountable on a straight and narrow road that helped me excel,” he said. “I think sports was really fundamental for my growth.”
After graduating from high school in 2010, Harold left MCH and began navigating the challenges and freedoms of adulthood on his own.
“I went from MCH straight into the real world,” he said. “The problem was, I wanted to live life a little bit. Did I make poor choices? Absolutely.”
He traveled some, was in and out of college, and lived in Houston for a time with his mother, her new husband and their two kids, but said that wasn’t a good fit.
He returned to the Dallas area, found work with a landscaping group and a car wash, and had a place to stay until his roommates, a young married couple, abruptly decided to move, leaving Harold without a home.
Harold moved into a homeless shelter in downtown Dallas, lying about a drug addiction in order to stay there. He slept on a mat on the floor and found little sleep.
For six months, Harold worked various jobs while living in the shelter. During this already difficult time, he faced another emotional challenge — his birth mother was dying of ALS, and he did his best to care for her while managing his own circumstances.
The ALS diagnosis was the final chapter in a lifetime of health challenges for Harold’s mother. Although she had physically recovered from the car accident years earlier, she later suffered three strokes, and developed a speech impairment. She died just six months after being diagnosed with ALS.
“She went through hell and back before she got diagnosed with the worst part of her life,” Harold said. “But she never lost her love for her daughter and her son.”
Through his car wash job, he connected with someone who offered him a place to stay while getting on his feet. Art, who is now 71, eventually formally adopted him even though Harold was a grown man in his 20s at that point.
“I felt like I lacked a real parent until Art,” Harold said.
Harold reached back out to MCH, reconnected through After Care services, and made the decision to try again. He re-enrolled in college, secured employment, and began rebuilding his life with renewed focus.
He has spent eight years with his current job in supply chain management with BSN Sports, the country’s largest producer of sports apparel and equipment. Harold, who is minoring in audio production at UT-Dallas, wants to work on a master’s degree in supply chain management and analytics after completing the undergraduate program.
He recently was awarded the prestigious Albaugh Scholarship, which will help with college expenses.
Despite his many challenges, Harold still finds thankfulness in his experiences.
“I think that hardships are fundamental for growth,” he said. “If you don’t go through anything in life, you take things for granted. I had to grow up. It made me a wiser individual. I’m appreciative of that.
“I’ve had people say, ‘I don’t understand how you’re still here.’ Ask that of anybody who’s faced such challenges and thrived. It’s because they managed to not let it consume them.”
Leave a Reply