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