THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 11, 1996 TAG: 9608110069
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH LENGTH: 129 lines
In what organizers hope will be a tiny first step to things much grander, Ships At Sea dedicated a new school on Saturday to help men who are recovering from substance abuse to recover their lives - and futures.
``We want to take them and recycle them,'' said John Gimenez, president of the board of directors of Ships At Sea, at a ribbon-cutting ceremony marking the opening of the new Computer and Character Development School.
For now, the school is limited to a few well-equipped computer classrooms in a converted warehouse. But its future home is anchored in the James River: a decommissioned Navy warship that, as soon as a pier can be found, will be transformed into a school of hope and opportunity to serve as many as 500 recovering substance abusers annually.
``In this state and other states, we can successfully provide detoxification and treatment for a substance abuser,'' said Linda Jennings, executive director and founder of the Ships At Sea program. ``The problem is, once he is detoxified, we send him out into the streets without an education, without vocational training and without character development.''
It's treatment for the symptoms and not the underlying illness, she said.
Ships at Sea, a private program using public funds and community donations and support, aims to provide recovering substance abusers with training to win and hold good jobs.
For now, the program is operating on a $400,000 Labor Department grant in its new land-based headquarters. But it has already won congressional approval to take over the destroyer tender Yosemite, which was decommissioned in 1993.
``We would bring men on board for a full year and provide general equivalency diplomas, vocational training, character development, job placement and follow-up services,'' Jennings said.
The Navy has left all facilities in place aboard the ship for just that purpose - everything from sheet-metal shops to a barber shop.
It will cost roughly $4 million to ready the ship and get it through its first year of operation; then $2 million or so annually to run the program, Jennings said.
The money is available, she said. And it will actually be a bargain, considering the public costs of not converting substance abusers from lives of drugs, crime and social dependency to self-sufficiency.
The only sticking point: where to dock the ship.
``We need a pier,'' Jennings said. ``Once we have a pier, there is money we can get.''
Hopes are that the new training center will help convince people of the program's worth and potential. It's already impressing state officials, even before its first class opens.
Two months ago, the building in which the school is housed - the former TotalTire Center on Victory Boulevard at Interstate 264 - was an empty warehouse. Today, it's offices and classrooms, including a 23-unit computer lab in what was a freezer.
The efforts were brought together largely with the generosity, ingenuity and labor of contributors ranging from plasterers to computer wizards.
Retired Army Col. Gary Nelson, deputy director of the program, said as he listed off the many contributors: ``This has been a labor of love.''
And of spirit.
With a strong emphasis on faith, the program has already brought together people from several local denominations, all sharing a vision of making their communities better by giving some of those on society's darkest fringes a chance to make their lives better.
``I am deeply impressed by what you have here,'' Timothy A. Kelly, commissioner of the Virginia department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services, told about 100 people gathered for a ribbon-cutting ceremony Saturday morning. It is, he said, an example of turning ``guns into plowshares.''
He noted how much had been done in less than two months by the privately run program and compared it to what he said would have happened if it were a government program.
``We'd still be on our third planning meeting,'' Kelly said. State and federal dollars will be available to help the program, he said, but ``we intend to move out of the way to let something good happen here.''
Kelly said government ``cannot answer all the problems of our society. We need the help of our churches; we need the help of our communities.''
``Think of the money that was not spent here,'' Kelly said. ``You have an efficiency based on the goodness of the heart that government cannot touch.''
Further, unlike a sectarian government program, Ships At Sea has a strong religious foundation.
``We're glad to see that it is a faith-based program,'' Kelly said. ``The scientific research shows that without a faith-based program, we cannot be effective'' in trying to instill a moral compass in those who have headed down the wrong roads in life.
And Gimenez, pastor of Rock Church in Virginia Beach, said he knows all too well the need and the challenge.
``It's 1963. I was in prison. And the only thing I had to look forward to was getting out and coming back,'' said Gimenez. ``It was a cycle for 16 years of my life. . . shooting dope.''
His family wouldn't have him. He couldn't hold a job. And even though his time behind bars always sobered him up, the streets led him back to his old ways.
``I found my way to a little church, looking for a bed, and I had an encounter with the Supreme Being,'' Gimenez said. And - almost unknowingly - he began to learn the value of a good day's work. ``I was the one who swept the floors and cleaned the bathrooms.''
That is the key, Gimenez said. Not just cleaning up your act, but having a new scene to move to.
``Rehabilitation is nothing if you don't have something to go to - a goal or a vision,'' Gimenez said. ``Most of the people who come off the streets have no hope. They see no future, they see only the past.''
Michael Simon, 45, knows what that is like.
Time was that he didn't look beyond the moment, much less a decade down the road. He lived for his next drink, his next high. And worse.
He had little doubt that one day he'd ``be in the graveyard with my mama crying over my grave and putting flowers on it.''
Simon said he spent years on the streets of Washington, wallowing in a destructive life. He was in and out of every government program intended to help him mend his ways. But he never healed.
By joining Ships At Sea, ``a door has been opened up for me,'' said Simon.
He wants to take computer classes now and get a job later.
``I want to learn a skill that will make me marketable, and I want to get closer to Jesus Christ,'' Simon said.
And he hopes, one day, to help lead others off the bad road he was on. ``There are so many people who have had doors closed to them.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by CANDICE C. CUSIC, The Virginian-Pilot
Maurice Smith, left, director of admissions and placement for Ships
at Sea, shows the new computers to Michael Simon.
Photo by CANDICE C. CUSIC, The Virginian-Pilot
Dr. Timothy Kelly, the commissioner of Mental Health, Mental
Retardation and Substance Abuse Services, said the privately run
Ships at Sea training program gets more done because government
doesn't interfere.
KEYWORDS: REHABILITATION PROGRAM SUBSTANCE ABUSE DRUG
ABUSE by CNB