“You’d Remember If You Had...”

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“Have you met him yet?” That was a question I heard multiple times during the first few weeks of Autumn being open.

“I’m not sure. I’ve met a lot of kids,” I would say.

“You’d remember if you had.”

I had been on staff at The Bridge since January, but those first few months had been spent getting ready to open. Now I was meeting the people who would actually be using the place, and there were a lot of names to learn.

Then one day a kid came up and asked who I was. He was confident, and his questions felt more like an interrogation than a friendly introduction. When he told me his name, all the previous questions about meeting him started to make sense.

I vaguely recognized him. During a visit to the old Bridge skatepark a few years earlier, I had watched this little guy on a 16” bike going faster and higher than most everyone else. I remember being impressed. Now I was learning that he had plenty of opinions to go along with his amazing riding ability.

We ended up sitting on the stairs and talking for 30 minutes or more. Every once in a while, somebody would squeeze past us to get up or down. He had plenty to say about God, and none of it was particularly favorable.

He could not make sense of all the bad things in the world if God was really powerful and loving. He was also convinced the world would be better if everyone smoked weed. In his mind, everybody would be more chill, and we would not have wars and things like that.

I tried to reason with him. He was not hearing it. We didn’t agree on much, but that conversation was the beginning of a relationship that would continue for years.

Afterward, I learned that many of the staff had already spent a lot of time investing in him. At some point, Steev had even baptized him. There was more history there than I knew, and over the years many more staff and volunteers would learn to care for him.

He was around Autumn a lot. Sometimes he would disappear for a stretch, then show back up. There were problems at school and at home, although he did not say much about that stuff. I knew pieces of what was happening, but I never knew the whole picture. There was something about him that made you want to like him, even when he was being super difficult.

He kept getting better on his bike, and everyone recognized his ability. There always seemed to be someone willing to help him out with parts. He could do some incredible things on a bike, but keeping the bike working was sometimes another story.

He was not much of a mechanic, and he could get frustrated in a hurry. Once, I watched him beat the top tube of a frame with a crescent wrench until he had destroyed it. I don’t remember what he was angry about. I just remember the frame was never the same again.

Over the years there were a lot more conversations about God, the Bible, and Jesus. During one stretch, he started spending hours each day reading his Bible. His attitude changed, and he was doing better with some of the things he had been struggling with. It looked like things had turned a corner.

His riding was getting noticed too. In April 2009, he won 1st place in his class at JoMoPro and did an interview with FuelTV. In that interview, he said, “ I don’t know where I’d be if it weren’t for the Bridge and the people here. This place saved my life and that’s the truth.”

We later did a couple of photo shoots with him to get pictures for JoMoPro ads that I ran in RideBMX in early 2010, leading up to that year’s contest.

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It was fun to be part of all that. I knew he had ability, and my position at Autumn gave me opportunities to help other people see it. I could choose to feature him in a magazine ad or arrange an interview. JoMoPro gave him a place to show what he could do against riders from all over, and he earned that win himself.

I had not really considered that part of having a place like Autumn. I was around these local riders regularly, getting to know them and watching them progress. Now I was finding that I could open doors for some of them too. With him, it was exciting to think about where those opportunities might lead.

Away from riding, things were less predictable. There were stretches when he was doing well and others when he was struggling again. Those years at Autumn all blend together for me. At one point, I remember him showing up at my back door asking for help. He needed somewhere to stay. I invited him to stay with us while things got sorted out, and he took me up on it.

While he was there, I learned he didn’t have the documents he needed to get an ID or a driver’s license. He didn’t have a birth certificate available to him, and there were questions to sort out about his Social Security information. I remember making calls and trying to figure out who could help. It involved more than one state and was a huge mess, but we made some progress.

"I just want to do what I want to do." That's a phrase I have heard multiple times right before someone is about to make a series of bad decisions.

After a couple of weeks, he left. He let me know he was going to break the ground rules I had given him, and he respected me too much to do that while staying in our house. He didn’t want to ruin our friendship. There were things he wanted to do that he knew he could not do while living in our house.

In conversations afterward, he would talk about how much peace and joy he had experienced during the season when he was reading his Bible and listening to God. Then he would say, “But right now I just want to do what I want to do.”

There were calls when he needed help and times when he wanted to address his struggle with addiction. On one occasion, I arranged to take him to a residential rehab facility. We got there and started the interview, but as he learned what staying would require him to give up, he stood up, walked out of the room, and started walking home. Home was about 40 miles away.

I picked him up along the road and took him back to Joplin. I told him to let me know if he wanted to try again.

Another time, John Andrus and I were taking him to get help. While we were stopped at a traffic light, he jumped out of my van. As he walked away, he told us he loved us, but again he just wanted to do what he wanted to do.

He’s not the only guy I’ve heard say that. Over the years, I’ve heard some version of it from other young men I had been investing in, often right before a series of bad decisions. It became a phrase I hated hearing.

About the time I quit working for The Bridge and took a job at a church, he moved out of state with the hope of getting a fresh start. He got a job and stuck with it, and from what I could tell, he was doing well. We talked every once in a while. He would tell me what was happening and he’d talk about getting another bike so he could ride again.

Sometimes he called on Father’s Day. Those calls meant a lot to me.

The last conversation I remember having with him was on Father’s Day in 2016. He told me how great everything was going. After all the times I had watched him struggle, it was good to hear him talking that way. I felt like things were finally working out.

A few weeks later, I got a call informing me that he had passed away.

I still come back to that Father’s Day conversation. He was telling me about his life, and I was glad he had called.

I didn’t know it would be the last time we talked.

Years before taking the job at Autumn, during a conversation with God about my purpose or calling, I remember hearing, “You are going to be a father to the fatherless.” I had no idea what that meant. My time at Autumn really began to clarify that calling for me. Over the years, there were young men who ate at our table, stayed in our house, rode with me to church, and came along on road trips. Some of them started feeling like my kids in ways I had not expected.

I had spent years wishing I could stay in one place long enough to invest in people. With Chaos, I could have a conversation after a show, pray with somebody, and then pack up for the next city. I often wondered what happened afterward, but I usually wasn’t there for the hard parts that came next.

At Autumn, I was there when somebody came back doing better, and I was there when we were having the same hard conversation again. Sometimes that meant sitting on the stairs. Sometimes it meant making phone calls about a birth certificate or driving someone home from a place I had hoped he would stay.

I wanted to be there for those things. But I hadn’t understood beforehand how hard it would be.

I’ve left his name and some parts of the story out of this account out of respect. There were a lot of people who cared about him, and I’m grateful I got to be one of them. These are just a few of the memories that have stayed with me.

Jeremiah Anderson

Rooted Action Park Founder

If you enjoyed this story, share it with someone else who might enjoy following along. I have a lot more stories from these years that I’d like to tell, so leave a comment and let me know if you want me to keep writing them.