Hope is Something We Create

hope is something we create

but before i tell you how i discovered

this

i need to take you back to the beginning

when i was homeless on the streets of

pittsburgh

i was 17 years old and i found myself

on the street i remember it was a day

like today

cold and clear i was waiting for the 61c

bus and i just finished giving plasma

for the fourth time

they had trouble finding a vein and i

was worried

about how else i was gonna get enough

money to eat

later that day one of the guys who

helped

me figure out how to survive on the

street pulled me aside

and he said that i wasn’t going to make

it

and he told me about a welfare office

downtown where they might be able to

help

and so that’s what i did the next day

i went into that office and tried to

apply for welfare

they gave me a mishmash of forms i had

no idea what to do

and just as i was about to give up one

of the women at the front desk came over

and sat down next to me

it was her lunch hour but she spent that

time with me helping me sort out all the

forms

and helping me figure out how to fill

them out

welfare saved my life it was a hand up

in every sense

the cash assistance helped me get off

the street and i got a ruined group

house

the food stamps ensured that i no longer

went hungry

a few weeks later i went back to my old

high school

to see my senior year english teacher

mrs brunger

she was the toughest teacher in the

school

if you cut her class she might fail you

but she was also extremely kind when she

saw me she asked

what happened why wasn’t i at college

and for the first time i told somebody

about all of the pain and the violence

that i had endured

and why i was alone and scared

not only did she listen but she helped

put together a plan

and she made me apply to a little

college

in iowa called grinnell

i told her i’d never been west in this

west of ohio

but she said that grinnell was a place

where i would be able to figure out

who i was and who i wanted to be and she

was right

but even after i applied i had no idea

how i was going to pay for all of this

and then grinnell did something

extraordinary they bet on me

gretchen zimmerman who is the director

of the financial aid office

saw my application and she

went to the department of education and

explained that i was homeless

i had no parents and that

they needed to find a way to get me to

grinnell

and they did

i thought that once i got to college

everything would be fine

but i couldn’t run away from my past i

still didn’t fit in

i didn’t have parents every time the

school

shutdown i was homeless again

and i was constantly doing all the

things

that parents normally do taxes financial

aid

i had five jobs on campus

along the way i got

extraordinarily lucky and i found a

mentor

and a champion george strake was a

history professor who had once been the

president of grinnell

he left to go to the peace corps and

then he returned to teach again

i ended up being the last student added

to his southern african history class

and that started a journey that changed

my life

george encouraged me to do things that i

didn’t think i could do

he believed in me when no one else did

one summer he helped me get a research

grant

to understand human rights in south

africa and he liked the paper so much

that he sent it to amnesty international

and the next summer i ended up in cape

town

covering the truth and reconciliation

commission

and actually meeting nelson mandela and

desmond tutu

that experience convinced me that i

wanted to go to law school

that i wanted to be a lawyer i wanted to

change the world

i didn’t know how

many years later i was invited back to

grinnell

to teach a class on the sixth amendment

and wrongful conviction

i spent six years representing a man who

had been wrongfully convicted of murder

and when he was released grinnell

asked me to come and teach this class so

i spent a week on campus

and it was thrilling it was great to be

back to help students

to mentor them to answer questions and

that week i had a chance to have lunch

with george

and i told him that i would never be

able to repay him for all that he had

done for me

and he turned to me and he laughed he

said of course not i

could never repay all the people that

helped me along the way

all you can do is pay it forward

and help people the way i’ve helped you

and he was right and that’s when i

realized

hope is something we create

when we invest in the people around us

you