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Henry's Story
"I was doing real well," says Henry Jones, of his life as a young, married man with three children and a good job as a maintenance engineer at the World Bank. He also thought life was fine when he was growing up in Georgetown, attending Stevens Elementary, Francis Jr. High, and Western High School. But "when they started building Watergate, they went all around and people bought the housing and pushed us up. Just pushed us up farther and farther...Where (Foggy Bottom) is now, up and down Virginia Avenue, that was 90 percent blacks, the whole area. But when they started going up on the rent and people couldn't afford it, they started pushing them up," he says. "Til eventually they had them all out of there."
The Jones family tried to stay in Northwest. "We came up a little further," he says. "We moved out of Georgetown. We moved up on 21st and M. We moved up on 17th and Q. My mother had a house there." Their last house was 23rd and L.
Henry adjusted. He moved to Southeast, riding the bus to and from work in Northwest. But after 10 years on the job, "everything just started falling apart." After Henry's employer lost his World Bank contract, "everything just started going downhill. Me and my wife separated. For a long time, I lived with my mom. Then I started drinking, drinking, drinking," he says. "And then I finally just gave up on everything."
Homeless, Henry spent his days in the last place he felt at home-around 23rd and K Streets, NW. Nights, he stayed at the Gospel Mission for $2 while he did day labor for $2.75 an hour. "I never panhandled," he said. "I would work just enough to get myself something to eat and buy my drinks." But when the drinking got so bad that he didn't have the $2, he started to stay at a homeless shelter in the District. He stayed there for 9 years.
"[The shelter] was a hellhole. Rats and lice and bugs. Everything you could name was in there. Toilets was all stopped up all the time, and never cleaned up...There was no hope. There was no program. There was nobody reaching out to you. The only hope you had was just wake up in the morning and go get something to drink," he says. "If I had seen something that was working when I was there, of course I would have gotten in the program, because I would have seen a better way out...I thought that was life."
What got him out was a broken foot. Referred to Christ House, he did not think he could stop drinking, so he left right after his foot healed. Finally, a policeman took him to "detox." "I was in such bad shape 'detox' put me out. They said, 'You're gonna die anyway,'" says Henry. "So I staggered across to DC General [Hospital, and] they wouldn't admit me because they said I wasn't sick enough." Then Henry remembered Christ House and asked a social worker to call. On July 14, 1991, there was one bed. "God was with me," he says.
After the homeless shelter, Christ House was a sharp contrast: "The people treat you with so much love in your first two days, you be scared and nervous because the first thing come to your mind is, 'I wonder what these people want out of me.' Cause you never been treated so sweet and so good and so kind. And the people are all reaching out to you, trying to help you. It take a homeless person a while to get used to Christ House. I come to find out the whole time people just loving and caring for you. Want to see you have a better life, a better way of life."
Almost immediately, Henry established a relationship with Sister Mary Louise, one of several nuns who worked at Christ House. "She seen something in me that I couldn't see in myself," he says. "My mind was almost gone. I couldn't remember my family or nothing." After work, "she would go upstairs and call around different places just to find my family," he remembers. "She stuck right with me."
Because he could not walk at first, Henry appeared to be headed for a nursing home. But after watching him practice, doggedly pulling himself up and down the stairwells, Sr. Mary Louise suggested moving him to the floor where staff live with their children, intentionally creating community with the men. "That was a big help," says Henry, "because when I was in the alley drinking, kids used to come by and throw bottles at us. [This] helped me get back friendly with kids. So I started building from there." Church came next. Then trips outside of Christ House. Sister Marcella, another nun who worked at Christ House, took him to parks, on picnics. "She used to tell me, 'You know, Henry, you can have more fun without drinking,'" he says. "They gave me hope."
"How little it takes for someone just to begin to see themselves with different eyes," says Dr. Janelle Goetcheus, who lives and works at Christ House. "Many see themselves as failures. They've been belittled by lots of things that constantly put them down. They begin to see themselves as really having gifts and just being caring people. It doesn't take much."
On his feet, Henry found his niche in the Christ House clothing room, where he works weekday mornings, keeping donations in order by size and article of clothing. Once known as "the meanest drunk on K Street," Henry uses this post for peer counseling. "Our most powerful people in terms of encouragement now are folks who have been through, who reach out now to the other folks who are coming in," says Dr. Goetcheus. "They really become the ones who reach out where sometimes we're not having any luck in reaching out as staff."
Now in his own apartment down the street from Christ House, Henry plans to stay in the neighborhood - reaching out. He is on the Board of Directors of Christ House, and the leadership committee of Kairos House, a renovated apartment building two blocks away for 37 former Christ House patients. Along with a few like Henry who have their own apartments in the neighborhood, the residents of Kairos House are the nucleus of the Kairos program of continual spiritual renewal, maintaining sobriety and "giving back" to this community of formerly homeless and formerly addicted men.
Henry recently took a part-time job with Unity Health Care, running their shower program. Weekly, nearly 60 homeless men rely on Henry's service to receive a warm shower and a clean set of clothes. Henry continues to volunteer nearly 100 hours per month at Christ House - both in the clothing room and in leadership positions.
"I could move on if I want to," he says, "but I don't want to. I choose this life here at Christ House, helping other homeless people to have a better life. Because I know how it was out there and how it is now. If I can help them, I'll really reach out and help," he says. "That's what I want to do."
