13 minute read
Freedom House
RESTORING
Hartford couple building home for men recovering from addiction
Tony and Lynn Wood have a big dinner table. They need one to accommodate their large family and a revolving door of people they help on the path to recovery.
Through their ministry, the Woods are giving recovering addicts a home and a fighting chance to restore their lives.
“I once was a drug addict and a guy that didn’t have his life together,” says Tony, founder and director of True Freedom Ministries. “Jesus got ahold of me, and when he did, I became concerned about everybody else and helping them. I had a vision for Freedom House that I knew was from God.”
The endeavor started on a small scale with an opportunity to help one person who was recovering from addiction and needed a job. The Woods say the man’s life was transformed through gainful employment at Tony’s home-building company, along with discipleship and practical life guidance.
Helping that person find stability and restore meaning to his life over 12 years ago inspired the Woods to help as many people as they could with the same idea: helping people escape the cycle of addiction by teaching them to live by faith and restoring broken relationships with family.
“Most commonly, when people have a history of drug abuse and alcohol abuse and things like that, they have broken relationships with their families, and it’s really hard to gain employment afterwards,” says Lynn, affectionately called “Mama Lynn” by the people in their program. “A lot of them get out of jail and they just repeat the same cycle because they’re helpless and they have no resources to pull from, because oftentimes, their family has lost faith in them.”
For over a decade, the Woods have been informally assisting people by feeding them, allowing people to set up campers or tents on their Hartford property, and sharing the gospel with them, in addition to giving them jobs.
“We can just give them a safe place where they have a chance,” Lynn says. “If they’re really serious about this, we’re going to help them have the means to follow through.”
However, the Woods outgrew the current model of their informal program and had to start turning people away, thus inspiring the idea to build Freedom House.
Freedom House, a 24-bed men’s recovery facility, is the heart of a plan for a ministry that seeks to provide men with a history of alcohol and substance abuse with a program to restore their lives. The program includes a whole life assessment to help participants stay sober, reestablish relationships with their families, create a plan for their financial responsibilities such as paying child support and fines and other legal responsibilities.
During their time at Freedom House, the participants will also have the opportunity to volunteer and give back to their community.
Tony and Lynn Wood, founders of True Freedom Ministries, discuss the finishing work needed to complete the construction of Freedom House.
“The main goal is for them to have a relationship with Jesus, because we know that if we can get that right then everything else will work itself out,” Tony says. “You can’t do what we’ve done in as short an amount of time as we have accomplished it without this being the plan of the Lord, because there has been an overwhelming amount of donations from the community.”
The Woods’ dedication to the cause earned them a $12,500 grant award from Wiregrass Electric Cooperative’s Operation Round Up Foundation to help get the Freedom House nonprofit up and running. About 85% of WEC’s members volunteer to round their monthly bills
Tony and Lynn are constructing a 24-bed facility to provide a home for men seeking to restore their lives.
to the next-highest dollar to contribute to Operation Round Up. The foundation collects more than $120,000 annually, which is then disbursed to worthy causes through grants, big and small.
“That’s what this program is all about,” says Brad Kimbro, WEC’s chief operations officer. “It’s going to stay here in this area to do things to certainly improve quality of life and give these guys the opportunity to better the outcomes for their lives.
“Members can feel a great deal of pride that the amount they’re contributing may just individually be a small amount of change, but collectively amounts to a larger sum of money that we can then put back into the community to help people here. Our members’ contribution is the reason it can continue to do great work.”
The Woods were also nominated and selected as Silent Heroes of the Wiregrass, a partnership with WTVY that provides money and recognition to unsung local organizations and individuals who help members of the community. As part of the program, the pair received a $1,000 grant to continue their mission.
“That’s just a great thing to recognize how blessed you are to be rescued from that less-than-desirable lifestyle and think, ‘I could use what happened to me and maybe use that to help someone else,’” Kimbro says. “Our foundation was extremely pleased to provide a grant to help them continue to serve others. Who knows what this ministry will be able to do and to help people overcome?”
Construction on Freedom House was nearly completed during a May visit to the property in Hartford. Once finished, True Freedom Ministries will have the only rehabilitation program in Geneva County for those recovering from addiction.
“We can’t help everybody,” Tony says, “but I am going to do everything that the Lord will allow me to do and do my part.”
Visit freedomhouseal.com for more information about the program.
Tony gives a tour of where the bedrooms and bunks of Freedom House will be located.
(LEFT) Tony points out where the bathrooms are being constructed inside Freedom House in Hartford.
Our Friend Jim
Our friend, Jim Sullivan–and he was a friend to everyone who knew him– left us on May 4 of this year. Jim lived a full life. He was a football star, playing at Ole Miss. He was a successful businessman in the family furniture business. He was president of the Alabama Public Service Commission for 25 years. In that role he established a logical formula for utility service that is still used today. He served as president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) and guided that organization for a number of years. He was an adviser to many energy companies and a leader in the electric industry.
But Jim was more than a success in the business world. He was a tireless supporter of Glenwood, a Birmingham-based organization that treats adult autism. He served on the Glenwood Board of Directors for many years. He was chairman of the Glenwood Adult Services Campaign, which raised $3 million dollars to expand autism treatment. The facility built to house the program was named The Sullivan Center in honor of Jim and his late wife, Susan.
Jim had fun. His dry sense of humor was evident in almost everything he did. He had a mischievous little grin, and he used it often. You couldn’t tell if he knew everything or nothing about the subject being discussed.
He loved hunting, fishing, photography, building homes, and he loved people. Jim loved his friends and kept up with all of us. But, most of all, Jim loved his family: his wife Toody; his daughters, Leigh Ann and Brannon; his sons-in-law; and his nine grandchildren.
The following poem was read at his funeral. It is so appropriate for Jim.
by Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
Jim was a man. He was our friend. We will all miss him dearly. His legacy is that we remember him as the man he was.
I hope you have a good month.
Gary Smith is President and CEO of PowerSouth Energy Cooperative.
Closing Deadlines (in our office): September 2022 Issue by July 25 October 2022 Issue by August 25 November 2022 Issue by September 25
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A word about barbecue
Now I’m not going to get myself into a tussle over barbecue.
For some it is a passionate subject. They even argue over how to spell it -- BBQ, barbeque with a “q”, barbecue with a “c,” and such.
They also argue over whether barbecue is a process, as in “gonna barbecue some ribs” or the final product, as in “pass the barbecued ribs,” or both.
Years ago, folks at the U. S. Department of Agriculture tried to clarify things by declaring that for canned or packaged meat to be labeled “barbecue” it had to be “beef or pork in barbecue sauce.”
That should have settled it, but of course it didn’t.
Why? Because down in Dixie, barbecue is like French wine. Each region has its own.
One taste and you know where you are.
Growing up in Alabama, for us barbecue was mostly beef and pork, with an occasional chicken part thrown on the grill. Out in Texas they grill sausages and bologna, and call it barbecue, which is fine with me. I have even heard of barbecued shrimp.
Then there is the sauce, which is as varied as the meat. Up in the Tennessee Valley they have a “white sauce,” while in South Alabama I grew up with a tomato-based sauce livened up with brown sugar, pepper, vinegar or something else. But not always.
If you want to see barbecue in all its glory, do a search online. Or just stick with what you like.
For many folks, barbecue captures a moment and holds it suspended, waiting to be remembered and enjoyed.
For me, one of those moments came when I was riding through rural Wilcox County. It was a warm summer Sunday morning. Windows down. Suddenly I caught the smell, then I saw the church where under the moss-hung oaks men gathered around a 55-gallon drum that had been converted into a grill. I stopped.
While the men cooked (or barbecued if you prefer), the women spread out side dishes on tables that been serving this purpose for years. Potato salad, fried okra, corn bread, a feast fit for a king.
A man that I assumed was the preacher seemed to be supervising. So, I approached him and asked “Can I buy a plate”?
He smiled and said, “Come join us.”
I was the only white face there. Not that it mattered. We were church folks and members of the barbecue nation.
When we all were served and seated, the preacher asked the Lord to bless us all. And when I bit into my ribs, I knew He had.
With dinner done (not lunch, dinner), the men sat together and I sat with them. The women cleaned up and the teenagers (there were some there) carried off the trash.
Then folks began to slip away, I shook hands with the preacher, thanked him for his hospitality and I took my leave.
This world could use more Sunday barbecues like that.
Harvey H. (Hardy) Jackson is Professor Emeritus at Jacksonville State University. He can be reached at hhjackson43@gmail.com
Illustration by Dennis Auth
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