Healing the Heart, Healing the Hood: God Turned It Around

By Dr. Olgen Williams

Olgen Williams traces his dramatic journey from embittered, drug-using Vietnam veteran to
nationally acclaimed neighborhood activist and deputy mayor of Indianapolis, Indiana. His sudden
miraculous orientation from drugs and despair to faith and freedom will inspire all those
concerned with the social and personal costs and consequences of illegal drugs and
drug-related crime. In December 2002, for his crime of having stolen less than eleven dollars
while serving as a postal worker in 1971, Olgen Williams received one of seven pardons
granted by President George W. Bush. Today, Olgen Williams is firmly grounded in family,
faith, and neighborhood in Indianapolis, Indiana, where he served for thirteen years as director
of Christamore House, a community center in the settlement house tradition. He has
pioneered and nurtured many programs—ranging from carpentry to theater, from community
policing to parenting and seniors programming—that serve the diverse needs of a multiethnic inner-city neighborhood. His book is not only the story of an extraordinary life-in-progress but also
a working handbook for neighborhood activism and transformation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hawes & Jenkins Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9781637842263

Book preview

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Healing the Heart, Healing the Hood

God Turned It Around

Dr. Olgen Williams

ISBN 978-1-63784-225-6 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63784-226-3 (digital)

Copyright © 2023 by Olgen Williams

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Hawes & Jenkins Publishing

16427 N Scottsdale Road Suite 410

Scottsdale, AZ 85254

www.hawesjenkins.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

To my Savior Jesus Christ, I would not be the person I am today if it were not for Him.

To Mary Catherine Williams, my wife, and the mother of our eleven children—Angie, Kimberley, Olgen M., Joi, Jason, Timothy, Rebecca, Nicole, Aaron, Jonathan, and David. Mary has been the guide of our home. I love her and our children very much.

To my church, friends, and community, whose faith and trust in me has allowed me to serve them.

A Son's Perspective

Foreword

Westside Community Prayer

Acknowledgments

Part I

My Childhood

Growing Up in Nap Town

From Nap Town to Vietnam

My Meaningless Existence

Fresh Starts and Old Problems

Growing Up…Again

Love, Life, and Lots to Learn

The Blessing of Family

The Church and the City

Working Together to Make a Difference

My Philosophy of an Urban Ministry

A Life Fulfilled

A New Challenge

Part II: Introduction

Introduction

The Favor of God

Peace in the Streets

School Board

A Call to Serve the City

A Second Run for Mayor

God Is Good!

New Mayor

Retired: Saved by Jesus to Serve

About the Author

To my Savior Jesus Christ, I would not be the person I am today if it were not for Him.

To Mary Catherine Williams, my wife, and the mother of our eleven children—Angie, Kimberley, Olgen M., Joi, Jason, Timothy, Rebecca, Nicole, Aaron, Jonathan, and David. Mary has been the guide of our home. I love her and our children very much.

To my church, friends, and community, whose faith and trust in me has allowed me to serve them.

A Son's Perspective

My father, Olgen Williams, is the father of ten children. He has been married to my mother for forty-five years, and out of this blessed union have come six sons and four daughters. He also has twenty-four grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. My father, the cornerstone of our family, has always been actively involved in all our lives. As the sole provider in our family, my father has made sure that we have all that we need. Despite his busy schedule, he has always found time to be with us. He's always at birthday parties, graduations, holiday gatherings, and just about anything our family does. He prioritized teaching his children to love God and to keep Christ at the center of our lives. His love that he has shown to us as young children has transpired into us as adults, and now, I show that love to my children. Being a father of six sons, my father understood the importance of teaching us the responsibility of a man in the home. He taught us to have a strong work ethic, how to respect women, and how to navigate society as a black man. From the time that I was born to even now, forty years later, my father's love and support have never changed. My father is my superhero. I pattern my life after his footsteps. All my father's children are grown adults now, but he continues to instill core values into all of us. He has never quit being a father. The values and morals he taught us as children are still part of my everyday life.

My father not only put his family first in his life, but he believed in community support. He has always believed and taught that you should be supportive of the community you live in. As children, we watched our dad live this out. There are so many stories I could share about his community involvement. As children, we would spend Saturdays cleaning trash up in the alleys of Haughville. We would participate in peace walks, neighborhood cleanups, and so many more events. My father supported the community he lived in with all his heart. People called him the mayor of Haughville; this made us proud as children. As a child, I would sit and listen to the concerned citizens in Tate's Barbershop as they discussed how they would improve their community. The discussions didn't end there. These individuals, supported by my father, made things happen! One of the first groups my father was part of founding was Westside Dads. These men wanted a safe and loving community for their children and achieved so much together.

My father was also very involved in the communities of Indianapolis. I've watched him build so many relationships with police officers, firefighters, mayors, governors, community leaders, organizations, and so much more. Despite all his active community involvement, though, I can say with honesty that my father never neglected his family. He would take us kids along, and we would have the opportunity to meet so many people.

In the past thirty-plus years of his community involvement, my father has held several positions on school boards, became the executive director of Christamore House, the deputy mayor of Indianapolis, and is currently serving on the Indiana State Fair Commission. He has so many achievements and recognitions for community involvement. I will not list them all, not because it would be hard but because my father would say, Why you list all that? He values and appreciates all his achievements but since he is sincere about his community, he would still do all the work without receiving any rewards or recognition. He loves Indy and Haughville, USA!

My father in his younger days made some bad choices in life. Some of those choices caused him to be a product of the judicial system as a felon. He did not allow this to deter him in life, though, and instead, he put his trust in God and allowed Him to lead and guide him. Under the administration of George Bush, he was granted a full pardon for which he gives all glory to God. Another remarkable accomplishment, I watched my father achieve was to go to college when he still had eight children living at home. I noticed how my father would be up late studying and attending his classes all while continuing to provide for his family and still give us all the attention, love, and support we needed as children. He was ultimately able to earn a bachelor's, master's, an earned doctorate, and an awarded doctorate degree.

My father has always demonstrated faith and determination to us. One example of this that still resonates with me happened in 1993, when the company my dad was employed by, Marathon Oil Refinery, decided to close its plant on the northside of Indianapolis. He had been a foreman there for sixteen years. They gave him the option to relocate to Texas or Illinois. He decided to not relocate and to instead trust God to be a provider for his family. With a still-growing family, this was a challenging time. My father was not a lazy man, though, so he started a business, and with the support of my mother and God, the journey began. Not long into that journey, while working on a community project, my dad fell from a fourteen-foot ladder. In his fall, he broke both hands and wrists, suffered a concussion, and sustained several cuts and bruises. His injuries put my father out of commission (and his ability to continue his main source of income) for six months. I never saw my father panic, though; he simply trusted God. In that time, his church, community, and so many others began to pour in support from everywhere. With their help, his business continued to maintain and provide for our family. Because of this, he was able to get more involved in his community, which eventually opened the door for him to become the interim director of Christamore House.

Out of all the challenges and obstacles my dad has endured, he has continued to love God and give his love and support to his family.

Foreword

Olgen Williams demonstrates that the writing of autobiography can be an act not only of expression but also of healing. He began to write Healing the Heart while a student at Indianapolis Martin University, whose stated mission is to provide a healing and freedom-minded environment.

For over two decades at Martin University, the writing of an autobiography was a vital element in the research-based Prior Learning Assessment (PLA) Program, which evaluates and grants credit for out-of-classroom college-level learning. Olgen Williams is among the many students who, with my guidance, completed the PLA process, earned additional credits in the classroom, and received bachelor's degrees.

When I wrote to a number of former students to suggest expansion and publication of their autobiographies, Williams was the one who responded at once, indicating that he was already in the process of expanding and editing his PLA autobiography. Motivated by a set of values profoundly anchored in family, religion, and community, Olgen is a man who responds readily to requests for service.

As the director of Christamore House, a successful neighborhood organization, Williams walked the talk, providing leadership by example. As a survivor of Vietnam, heroin addiction, divorce, physical injury, and imprisonment, Olgen has walked in the shoes of those he seeks to serve.

In his talk and through his writing, he explicitly and implicitly poses the question, the challenge: If I have achieved this, given the barriers I faced, what holds you back? Why cannot, do you not, do the same or more? While Williams himself is African American and Apostolic, the community he serves and speaks with, for, and to also includes people of many other religions and ethnicities—Catholics and Jews and Muslims, Hispanics and Poles and Irish. Although Olgen's autobiographical story is unique, he believes that it has implications for other humans.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. and other scholars of African American literature have identified such autobiographical genres as the slave narrative, the migration narrative, and the spiritual autobiography. All graduates of Martin University read the autobiography of Frederick Douglass with his account of progress toward freedom through literacy. Reaching further back in Williams's ethnically specific tradition, Olgen's life and story echo the Confessions of St. Augustine, who also transformed his life after an adventurous and profligate youth.

In the end, however, Healing the Heart, Healing the 'Hood stands distinct as the story of the unique life of a singular person. As individual as he is, Williams is deeply rooted not only in the historical experience of humanity as a whole but also in the specific history of his community and ethnic group. When scholars and citizens of the next centuries seek to know what life in this turn-of-the-millennium time was like, they will do well to turn to such records in the archive of human experience as Olgen's.

Selene Phillips, on commenting on the distorted pictures of her Native American ancestors in children's books, has raised this challenge: "If you yourself don't write your life story