James Reid Interview by Mark Fancher, Omar McCord & Damiaz Kenney

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My name is Mark Fancher. I am 13 years old.

My name is Omar McCord and I am 12 years old.

My name is Damiaz Kenny. I am 12 years old.

We interviewed James Reed AKA Coach Hank on June 22nd, 2016.

My birth date is November 28th, 1968. I was born and raised in this neighborhood. Now, I coach here. I’ve coached for the Gators for the last 12 years, mentor here, trying to improve the conditions of the neighborhood. I’m dug in here.

My childhood… I grew up with a single mom, 2 little brothers and a little sister in Garfield. Went to Fort Pitt, Arsenal, and Peabody High School. Played football. We didn’t have the Gators. I played football for the Morningside Bulldogs, and basically, man, my childhood was cool. I’ve watched the neighborhood go from a good neighborhood to a bad neighborhood and back to a pretty good neighborhood again. Right now, we’re diverse. It’s a little different to see white people walking up and down the street at 12:00 midnight walking their dog. It’s like, wow. But it’s a good thing our-our neighborhoods peaceful. It’s not a lot of drama right now.

I wanted to go to the NFL. Like a whole lot of people, I came up with playing football. But as you get older, you find out that that’s a big dream. You really have to be dedicated and have a lot of things fall in your way to be able to make it. But after that, I guess my goal was always to have a family, and I have that, so I’m good.

I went to college for two years. I went to Waynesboro College. I was up there playing football and at the time, I wasn’t taking college serious. I was still not sure what I wanted to do, and I wasn’t all the way mature yet. So I basically was in college just going through the motions and just cutting up while Coach Bob and Garth and them, they were going to school and doing what they were supposed to do, and the end result was I left school. I dropped out and they went on and graduated and got degrees and started building families. I ended up coming home, selling drugs. I went to prison for 10 1/2 years and I came home and it was a struggle trying to get on my feet and trying to take care of my family, and I found myself going back to the streets doing things that were going to cause me to be taken away from my family again. Having Jayla and Jordan, my younger kids, once I had them and I found out my passion for coaching and how much I loved it, that helped help me change my life and help me get away from the streets and become the productive person I am today.

When I first got the time honestly was like “I don’t never see me getting out.” Like how do you do 10 years? The number one thing is you miss your family every day. I’m a person who can adapt well to my surroundings. I watched a lot of people crumble. I watched people start taking all kinds of medicine and basically just almost losing their minds. For me, I’ve always been strong, and three years before I came home, that’s when people started dying. My uncle died, my grandma died, and then my mom died. That was just like the final straw. And at that time, I think I had two years left. It was just tough not having my mom no more. That was my best friend. And wondering what was gonna happen when I came home because I really had no idea of what things were gonna be like. Time is hard. It’s tough. You go through a lot, you see a lot. Wouldn’t wish on anybody, not my worst enemy. When I went in, a lot of people that were here when I left were gone. People had died. My oldest son, little Hank, he was three and Christian was 4 when I went in. When I came home, they were 13 and 14, so I had to be able to build my relationships again with them and also build relationships with just family members who I hadn’t seen in a long time and a lot of people had changed. I changed. The neighborhood changed. So it was a big adjustment. But you know, I’ve overcome it, and the biggest reason I think I’ve overcome it is because I started going to church and, I got into God. I take it very seriously because I think, probably more than anything, that’s the biggest thing that helped turn my life around. When I was in prison, I learned a lot about computers and I ended up working in the business office in the factory there, and now I work in the billing department for the county, and when I was in prison, I made $1.06 an hour. Now I basically do the same stuff I did in there. Learning that stuff in prison helped me, but I would have preferred to learn it out here and not miss all those years in my life.

You gotta work hard. Nobody gonna give you nothing. You gotta earn it. You gotta be focused and you gotta know what you wanna do with yourself. You gotta start thinking about “what do I wanna do? What do I wanna do when I get older? When I get out of high school?” And once you start figuring that stuff out, you start going to people and asking “How do I get that accomplished? How do I go about being whatever I wanna be?” And you work hard towards it. Ain’t no secrets. I wanna live to be old. I wanna be able to watch my kids grow up, my grandkids. Y’all, I wanna stay in Garfield. I don’t wanna move. I love my neighborhood and I always want to be involved with the Gators in some capacity. I’ll keep coaching until I’m too old to coach, till my knees give out. And from then, man, you know, just keep trying to give back to the community and trying to make a difference.

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