A degree of freedom: Graduation, a time for congratulations, was particularly sweet for four men who figuratively walked down the aisle at the Connection Resource Services Inc. headquarters on the Veterans Administration Medical Center campus in North Chicago recently.
Just six months after Ben, Jack, Larry and Tom (who asked that their last names not be used) entered the HELP Center, they became the center’s first “class” to graduate. The center is a short-term residential program to help homeless single adult men become self-sufficient. CRS began operating HELP (Habits for Effective Life Planning) in June.
The men couldn’t have been prouder. They all had jobs, their own housing and new attitudes about life.
“This is a feather in our cap,” said 52-year-old Ben, who had gone from sleeping in an abandoned car (“I was fortunate; I had it to myself.”) to a factory security job and a house in Waukegan that he will share with Larry and Tom. “The program gives us a new start. It breaks the cycle,” he said, candidly pointing out that a class at the center changed him from a person who “hated” everyone, including himself, to someone who likes people.
To Jack, a 46-year-old musician and sometime businessman, it meant obtaining housing and a music teacher’s position in North Chicago (“I have a job I love.”), a gig in Los Angeles and the right to visit his ex-wife and their six children in St. Louis.
Larry, a 57-year-old out-of-work laborer with medical problems who took to the streets when his savings ran out, has housing and a job he can physically handle in electronics.
As 48-year-old Tom, who just got a job as a limo driver, put it just before the ceremony, “Everyone here is excited about the graduation. This program has given us a second chance. We’re getting our life back together.”
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