Life on the Streets Without God and an Education

This is a survival story of a single mother having thirteen children. The father runs off and leaves. She has no high school diploma and no college degree. After the father disappears and leaves her for dead, she gets well and picks herself up. We are born and raised in East St. Louis, Illinois.

She goes downtown and registers to take college courses, and she starts working on her GED. She gets her GED, and she completes an associate’s degree in auto mechanics. Then she takes a part-time job at the little corner store after school.

So they are left to take care of the children—cook, clean, and make sure the kids do their homework. It is tough because we are children ourselves. But we make it through the hardest times of our lives. Out of thirteen children, eleven graduate and two refuse to go. Mother graduates again with a degree in teaching. Now she is able to get off food stamps and welfare. She has a job in teaching, and now she is able to support the last six kids on a salary.

Father shows back up when the last six are in high school. Mother refuses to take him back after he tried to kill her. It is a long, hard journey. But we make it through the toughest of times.

I have no children of my own, but I raised a niece and a nephew and two more adopted children in Columbus, Ohio. I have been in ministry for forty-three years. I drive buses and trucks for thirty-four years. I used to take the children on the bus with me and allowed them to see what is going to happen to them if they don’t go to school and get an education. They see me get cursed out many times when I have to tell people what the fare is.

This is what takes place when you don’t have God and education.