A Tale of Three Friends

Three young men were born and raised in Homewood. They had all of the usual influences of the rough streets to deal with and overcome... the gangs, the drugs, and the entire underground economy. The odds of graduating from the public education system were against them. The political, police, and public works departments in the city largely ignored their neighborhood. Businesses and legitimate jobs definitely avoided their neighborhood. Shady real estate investors plundered their neighborhood. Almost every white, middle class, or affluent resident abandoned their neighborhood when times got tough. Crack-cocaine devasted their community. Violence and poverty were just a part of their lives. All of these negative forces could have defined the type of men they would become. But... that did not happen. These three young men joined forces. They were all each other had, and they held each other accountable. They stayed out of trouble. They graduated from the public school system. They went on to college. They demonstrated remarkable resilience and courage. They made it out.

After college they had many opportunities to become upwardly mobile in American society. They could have done their best to live out the American dream, and most of their friends and family would have encouraged them to go that route. They could leave Homewood and never look back. As the three friends spent time together discussing their futures, it became more and more apparent to them that they had a different calling in life. Instead of moving up the corporate ladder and distancing themselves from Homewood, they would go back to Homewood in order to invest their lives in the community where they grew up. So, once again joining forces of friendship and holding each other accountable, they went back home to tackle the problems in their neighborhood. These three friends had a strong common bond. They loved sports. They decided that the best way to make a difference in Homewood was to start up youth sports programs in the community. Their plans were tough to implement, but it all worked out. They started relationally impacting literally thousands of people with their sports programs. Although they could have coached football in many different places, they decided to coach football at Westinghouse High School in Homewood. They built up a youth football program that kept hundreds of kids off the streets each summer and fall. They launched and coached baseball, basketball, and soccer programs. They were not employed by the youth sports programs, though. That was all volunteer work. To support themselves and their families, they took on whatever work they could find on the east end of the city. Their days were full of work and then volunteering many hours with the people in Homewood. Youth football games became Homewood community parties, where people gathered together to hang out with good music, great fun, and football. For one day each week, neighborhood and family fueds did not matter. Youth sporting events brought everyone together, no matter what street they lived on in Homewood. The three friends convinced many other men in Homewood to get involved in coaching the kids and contributing positively to the community. These three friends had built something special, with virtually no outside funding or even outside support from the powerful people in Pittsburgh who were busy ignoring Homewood. All of their efforts were grass roots. It was all sustained and supported by the Homewood community.

The three friends had sacrificed a lot for the people of Homewood. Marriages suffered because so much time and so many personal resources were invested in the youth in Homewood. Sometimes kids that they worked with ended up making bad choices and landing in jail or even ending up being killed by the violence in the community. This work sometimes broke their hearts when kids went astray or when adults who they invested in let them down. The media cast a constant negative shadow on Homewood, even though their work was a consistent positive force in the comunity. People who were not familiar with Homewood continued to stay away from it, having their perception shaped by the negative stories on the news. Powerful people who came up with bright ideas to turn Homewood around largely ignored the input or participation of these three men who had so deeply immersed themselves in the fabric of this community.

Then, suddenly, these three friends were thrust into the limelight of Pittsburgh. In one brief instance, everything that they had worked so hard for and sacrificed to build for the sake of the Homewood community seemed to come crashing down. On a Sunday afternoon, during the middle of a youth football game, somebody near to the stadium decided to shoot three people on the bridge between the busway and the street that runs parallel to the football field. The community party came to a tense standstill. The youth football game came to a hault as the young players took cover. People shook their heads at the thought that violence would make such an impact in this community on a Sunday afternoon at such a positive event. The police and ambulances showed up. The media showed up, jockeying for position to communicate the latest negative event from this struggling community. It has been a summer filled with violence in Homewood. The next day the chief of police and powerful government officials held a press conference from the field in Homewood to denounce the violence and to give an ultimatum to the Homewood community... give up the names of the shooters or give up the youth football program in Homewood. The most confident communicator of the three friends met with the police and politicians. He gave quotes to the newspaper reporters. He defended the people of Homewood. He defended the youth football program as a positive force in the community, not a negative force. He answered tough questions. In a strange twist of irony, the powerful people who had ignored and neglected him, his two friends, this youth sports program, and even this entire Homewood community for so many years suddenly had a vested interest in what was going on here. Only, this negative attention was not what they had expected.

The following week was tough. The people in Pittsburgh who were unfamiliar with Homewood and the youth football program here put pressure on to shut the program down. People in Pittsburgh who were unfamiliar with Homewood cast their judgment on the community based on the latest news reports. Talk radio hosts debated the idea pubicly on their airwaves... interesting that they would debate such a thing without ever having been to a youth football practice or game in Homewood. The powerful people in Pittsburgh debated whether or not to shut the youth football program down because of safety concerns... interesting that they would debate such a thing considering their intentional lack of investment in the safety of the Homewood community for so many years leading up to this unfortunate event last Sunday afternoon. After years of building meaningful relationships with many people in Homewood and sacrificing much behind the scenes in Pittsburgh in order to be a powerful force for positive change in a struggling neighborhood, these three friends were suddenly finding themselves in a position where everything that they had worked so hard to build was being attacked and scrutinized by people who did not know them.

I do not know how the story of these three friends is going to turn out, yet. I have a feeling that the three friends will navigate through it all, though. After all, they've done that their whole lives. They've overcome the odds their whole lives. They've done it because of their resilience and bond of friendship. Soon the powerful people will be gone from Homewood. The powerful people's attention will shift reactively to other parts of the city where problems are going on, and the positive forces in Homewood, including the youth sports programs, will go back to their roles of being ignored by the powerful people in the city. The majority of people in Pittsburgh will shift their attention away from Homewood until the next time something violent pops up on the news. Maybe that negative event will get kicked around pubicly again, but it will eventually go away as well. People will go back to ignoring Homewood again. The odds will continue to be stacked against the young people in Homewood again. And I'm sure that's exactly where you'll find three good friends working, three friends who grew up in Homewood and came back to give themselves away to the people of this community. This tale of three friends is... to be continued.