Jake

Jake Lashcomb was a little redheaded boy, skinny, pale, freckled. His brother was a tiny brunette. They were buddies, best friends. Because they had no father and little else, they particularly held onto one another. Jake was 7. James was 6. At the local market they straggled along together as their mother stalked rapidly through the store. As they left the front area of the store and arrived outside, Mother stopped short. “Jake,” she said “Wait right here until I get back,” and, leaving Jake on the sidewalk, marched away down the street with James in tow. Jake waited. He waited for a long, long time. When at least a number of hours must have passed, he went inside the store (not having any idea what to do) and, when questioned by the store owner, acknowledged his circumstance. Unfortunately, he didn’t know his own address or phone number. However, he could remember the phone number of a neighbor child with whom the two young boys occasionally played. The proprietor of the store called that number and the neighbor lady came to the store to pick Jake up. She took him to his house and was in for a shock. The place had been deserted, the furniture (what there was of it) all moved out. The mother and brother had vanished! They were gone and were never to return. Jake had been abandoned at a grocery store in his 7^th year and his “best friend” and brother taken as well!

Remarkably, the neighbor lady, Beverly, simply unofficially “adopted” Jake and raised him with her own. She, too, lived in impoverished circumstances, but she gave him kindness and love, and that was what he needed most. As a kindergartener, Jake was unsuccessful. He was tagged “special education” at that early age and, because of that early “evaluation” found himself in such classes through all his years of school which culminated when he, not surprisingly, finally dropped out of high school. Finding himself at 25 living in the “projects” (as he had for most of his life), having little in the way of education, a paucity of self confidence, and a wife he loved but couldn’t support, he made some consequential, but hardly unpredictable, decisions. And those decisions led him to a prison cell facing a life sentence. By age 35 he had lost his adoptive mother (whom he loved dearly) to cancer and had been deserted by the wife he adored. (He had always shown pictures of his wife to all who would show any interest, until she wrote him the Dear John letter that devastated him completely.) That was the year he met Carrie. Carrie Malcolm was a teacher. She taught GED classes at the prison where Jake was incarcerated. When she first came upon Jake in her classroom, she confronted a man who was (as he put it) “too stupid” to get his GED. Carrie knew better and told him so. She assured him, “I’m a fully credentialed teacher. I know what special education is and you aren’t it.” At first, he didn’t believe her. But she convinced him. He started taking serious interest in his studies. He worked and struggled and learned and, yes, finally passed that GED (after eleven attempts - talk about determination!). Not only that, but (at Carrie’s prodding and with some of her financial assistance – which, by the way, was against prison rules) he even began taking and passing college courses. Carrie also witnessed to him about God and got him studying his Bible and going to chapel. A sad and lonely boy was being transformed by the love of God and hope into a productive man. (It may be added that even a "10 year denial" at a parole hearing, while upsetting to Jake, didn't put him off his recently acquired determination to succeed!) Praise God!