Back to Life University: A Story of Hope

According to a Study

from the National Alliance to End Homelessness, on a single night in January of 2015, about 560,000 people were homeless, meaning they were “sleeping outside or in an emergency shelter or transitional housing program.” Another body of research conducted by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) showed that substance abuse is more common among the homeless than the general population. Approximately 26% of the homeless population in America abuses drugs, and another 38% abuses alcohol.

The latter certainly rang true for Mr. Jimmie Hale 73 years ago.

In the 1940s, well before the days of modern medicine and research, alcoholism was seen more as a characteristic of moral deviancy and less as a mental or physical health issue. Hale’s reputation for being the town drunk preceded him, and he was not thought highly of in his community. That is until one day, something magical happened.

Somewhere along his rocky and at times heartbreaking journey, Jimmie found God and a new way of living. After getting married and rehabilitating his entire life, he felt a spiritual urge to help others do the same. So he started a small storefront chapel in the same building he used to tend bar, and in 1944, the Jimmie Hale Mission was born.

However, decades of alcohol abuse reap unavoidable consequences and eight months later, a worn out liver took Hale’s life. He was survived by his newlywed wife Jessie, who was 27 years old at the time and pregnant with their first child. Affectionately called “Miss Jessie”, she made it her duty to continue her husband’s legacy. For ten years she worked alone, leading the ministry and men’s shelter.

“She is really the matriarch that kept it all together,” says Bonnie Hendrix, the Mission’s current Director of Advancement. But she didn’t have to go it alone forever. In 1954, Leo Shepura arrived. He and Miss Jessie worked as co-laborers of the Mission for 36 years until their retirement in 1990, when Tony Cooper took over.

Later in 1995, under Cooper’s direction, the Mission expanded to include Royal Pines, an intensive rehabilitation center for men located in rural Hayden, Alabama. And in 1998, Jessie’s Place, a shelter for women and children, became open to the public. Today the Mission, now in its 28th year, serves as a beacon of hope to Birmingham’s often forgotten population of the homeless and drug and alcohol addicted.

And according to James Poe, the kitchen supervisor, the Mission and all of its affiliates are driven by belief. “We don’t apologize for saying that we believe that Christ is the answer. We are a faith-based mission purely and because of that, we don’t get any state or any federal money.” While the residents don’t have to profess Christianity to be welcomed into the shelter, the Mission isn’t shy about its strong sense of spirituality being the driving force for its success.

To serve as building blocks to a better life, the Jimmie Hale Mission provides its residents with a thrift store and an education remediation program. It’s even partnered with the AIDT Ready to Work program in an effort to make its residents appealing to Alabama’s largest employers.

“That’s really exciting, to help build their resume and get them back to work,” explains Hendrix. “Because a lot of times they want to be self-sufficient, but there’s the stigma of having been homeless and having been in a homeless shelter.”

The Mission’s one-year program is specifically designed to pull its residents out of rock bottom. For the first four months, the men spend all of their time at the shelter under constant supervision. The goal of this first chunk of time is self-discovery, which they encourage by 1) helping the men foster a spiritual connection with God and 2) getting them the tools required to obtain a GED or other types of education. “I don’t care how much you’ve changed in here, the world hasn’t changed. And so it takes a change of heart,” says Poe.

By the second phase (the next four months), the residents are allowed to find a job outside of the Mission. “But still live here, still have the accountability of knowing that you could be drug tested at any time,” explains Poe. “You’ve still got to let somebody know where you’re at all the time.” By the time phase three rolls around, the men are expected to pull together a plan and prepare for the next step in their journey: life in the real world.

In 2007, the Mission relocated to its current facility on 2nd Ave N, just up the street from Sloss Furnace. It’s deliberately set up to look like a school campus, which is why employees have nicknamed it “Back to Life University”. As opposed to the average homeless shelter, which gives a man a fish, their mission is to teach a man to fish. “It’s hard to focus on changing your life when you’re hungry and you don’t know where you’re going to sleep that night,” explains Poe. “So if we can take those two basic needs out of the equation to start with, then we can start to get into the changing the life part, because that’s the long-term goal.”

It’s impossible to know how many lives have been touched since the Mission started 73 years ago, but one good story of triumph is all it takes to show what the Jimmie Hale Mission is capable of. James Poe didn’t just walk in and become the head of the kitchen, responsible for overseeing more than 400 meals daily. His path took many dizzying twists and turns before landing him where he is today and his odyssey throughout life was as unpredictable as it is fascinating and inspiring.

“I was never supposed to be here,” he says. Poe grew up in the ‘60s and ‘70s in Pleasant Grove, Alabama. Back then, it was picturesque and peaceful, not a stranger around for miles. “It was like Mayberry!” he remembers. “Everybody knew their neighbors and we didn’t lock our doors and everybody went to church…it was a great place to grow up.” Poe’s Christian, middle class family had no trace of abuse, poverty or addiction in its history.

“Growing up, the only drug problem I had as a child was getting drug to church every time the doors were opened,” he laughs. But at the age of sixteen, a rebellious spirit mixed with the desire to experiment and “be anywhere but Pleasant Grove, Alabama” threw him down a rabbit hole of various addictions and self-destructive habits that would take him decades to recover from.

He went to college for a while before dropping out, but right after high school is when he started drinking and experimenting with drugs. “[That life] just grabs a hold of you. In the ‘80s there was all the cocaine—there was the jet-setter lifestyle—and I lived it all for a while. But it didn’t last.”

“People have asked me a lot ‘Don’t you hate you wasted all of those years?’ and I say I didn’t waste them: they were all a part of the process to get me here now.”

James Poe

At the age of 25, he decided getting married and settling down would solve all of his problems, so that’s exactly what he did. For eight and a half years, he lived as a functioning alcoholic, keeping his nefarious habit fairly well-hidden under the guise of “social drinking.” Everything was fine until his addiction eventually caught up with him and he was fired from his job at Delta Airlines in 1995. His divorce shortly followed, and the next ten years would be a continuous downward spiral, one bad decision following the other. “It just continuously got worse.”

He managed a strip club in Baton Rouge for a couple of years before moving out to Las Vegas where he would stay for another eight years. Naturally, there was “more drugs, more alcohol, more everything”, and that lifestyle gradually took over. After he had slept on every couch available and exhausted all opportunities for a potential job, Poe made a decision. “Finally, in 2005, I picked up the phone and called the only phone number that I knew by heart.” After years of estrangement, not knowing if his parents still lived in the same house or even if they still lived at all, he called home.

When his father answered the phone, the first thing he told him was that his mom had died three years earlier and that he himself had suffered a stroke. Defeated, destitute and moments away from sleeping on the streets of Vegas, Poe asked his father if he could come back home. “He had to wire me the money to fly back to Birmingham, and he was there waiting on me at the airport like the Prodigal’s Son.” But old habits die hard.

“You would think that all of that—almost being homeless in Vegas, not being around to see my mother die, my dad in ill health, all of that—that that would be enough!” Even back in his hometown, Poe’s bad habits raged on.

In 2008, Poe met a bartender who was also a former classmate. They began dating and eventually got married, enabling one another’s addictions until 2011 when his wife told him “I love you to death, but I can’t live with you anymore.” It was then, after 30 years of alcoholism and drug abuse, that he decided to seek help. His wife would be the one to bring him to the Jimmie Hale Mission, and in April of 2011, he began taking steps toward recovery.

During his ten month stay, he got involved with New Faith Baptist Church in Pleasant Grove and eventually became the ordained minister of music and education. Poe and his estranged wife gradually started to reconnect, and on Valentine’s Day of 2012 they renewed their vows. Shortly thereafter, a position opened up for a kitchen supervisor at the Mission and the rest is history.

While looking back on his life, Poe recalled a sobering time when his father came to visit him in the Bessemer County Jail. To this day, his words still linger: You just don’t ever give up. Poe’s father passed away two years ago, but not before finally seeing his son sober. Judging from his suburban background, no one could have predicted his life would take such a dark turn, but it’s not about where you come from that matters.

“We’ve had doctors come through here, we’ve had lawyers come through here. We haven’t had an Indian Chief yet that I know of, but we may very well have had one…They come from all walks of life,” he explains. “I don’t care who you are, you’re really only about three bad decisions and three bad circumstances away from needing to be somewhere like the Jimmie Hale Mission.”

After 52 years of doing things his own way, he says he had to come to terms with two undeniable facts: there is a God, and he isn’t Him. That realization that he isn’t in control of his own life and that everything was a part of a divine plan brought a refreshing peace of mind.

But the age old question still stands: can people change? “People can’t change on their own; if I could’ve changed, I would’ve done it long before I ever ended up here…I tell people all the time that 52 years of the very best plans that I could come up with ended up right here at the Jimmie Hale Mission.” To him, a changed mind is temporary and can easily be changed back; a changed heart, however, requires a supernatural force.

“God is the only answer: that’s what we believe, that’s what we teach, and we don’t apologize for it.”

While his journey may be far from over, James Poe’s story—filled with defeat, pain, faith and eventual triumph—is living proof that it’s never too late to be brought back to life.

If you’d like to learn more about the Jimmie Hale Mission or make a donation, click here.