“How y’all feeling?” Gary Smith’s voice nearly explodes as he begins his daily address to the middle section of pews, filled with grown men – half of whom are dozing off, the other half are semi-alert. Gary’s voice bounces off the organ and the back wall and heads towards the door, behind which a hot lunch waits (the reason the pews are filled at 11 a.m.). A mixture of scents rise from the pews – alcohol breath, cigarette-stained cottons or the freshly showered and perfumed, depending how far back you sit, and an indication of the different stages these men are at in their life.

Judging by appearance alone, one would expect a baritone voice boom from Gary, 52, who is nearly 6-feet 3-inches tall and 250 pounds. He bounds down the church aisles with a blue kufi warming his bald head. At first introduction, however, he is monkishly quiet and stingy with words – quite a contradiction to the person he presents to this audience of homeless addicts and recently released convicts, many of whom are often fighting with their own minds.
Gary was a part of this audience six years ago.

“Daddy, guess who I want to be like when I grow up?” inquired Ta’vin, maybe 7 at the time and childishly unaware of the grip that drugs had on his father. Ta’vin’s maternal grandmother’s North Carolina house is worlds away from the streets of Barry Farms where Gary met the “Monster,” the name he gave his heroin addiction, which he developed at 17 years old, around the time of his mother’s death. He gives up guessing after going through a reputable list of role models worthy for Ta’vin, his second child, to emulate. The shock of the answer – Gary – and the unworthiness of the person devastated Gary so much that he decided it was time to sober up.

Wayne Hall is in one of the side pews usually reserved for staff or special visitors to St. Aloysius Church’s Father McKenna Center. The center opens its doors daily to offer food baskets, tokens, showers, laundry service, HIV testing and referrals to men and families in need. Wayne had been coming to the center for nearly 10 years, eating free meals and sleeping for a couple of hours before heading back out to feed his 32-year-old heroin and cocaine habit. On this day, four months sober, Wayne has a busy schedule and has stopped by to greet Gary, his mentor and sponsor.

Ten years out of jail, Wayne remembers the exact moment when he decided he needed help to stop using. That particular morning found him sleeping off a $1,300 drug binge in a stairwell with vivid, clear thoughts of how he was going to kill himself. Miraculously, he knew well enough that he needed help. Later that morning, he found himself crying in Gary’s office.

“I was a fake, phony and a fraud!” Gary bellows to the middle pews on the other side of a wall from his cramped private office. “A little boy in a man’s body,” he says, interrupting the haze in some of the eyes. The recollections are still clear. He shares how he woke up, showered first, brushed his teeth … and then used his drugs. “In the beginning!” he blasts out. At some point, as with other addicts, the routine changed, turning into – wake up, snort first and then shower … maybe. The morning meeting is a brief break between his intake duties of passing out tokens, listening to problems and encouraging addicts to save their life by checking into detox centers. The hour meeting, however, is the sales pitch to get the trust needed; to let the men know that he is one of them, and if he can keep on recovering, so, too, can they.

“When King Kong died – I cried. Old Yeller – I cried,” he remembers the real boyhood. “That was when I was human before you taught me.” He talks to the men as his monolithic street education he has had to unlearn, the “little boy moves” he calls it – real men don’t cry, go hard, never let them see you sweat, take your knife.

“Now, where I’m from, real men talk,” he says, offering up a big bear hug to Wayne before he heads off to get ready for his job.

Gary Smith, your neighbor, a convicted thief and drug dealer, recovering addict and mentor to dozens, a good man and dedicated father is now every bit the role model in which Ta’vin aspires.