A Man on the Move

 

Freddy Cooper had tried everything. He had checked into rehab, gone through detox, and served a four-year sentence for cocaine use. He had even moved from city to city in North Carolina. Every time he crossed a new city limit line, he hoped he could break free from the oppressive addiction that limited his future hopes. Nothing worked.

“They say if you get away from your surroundings, you might change,” says Freddy. “But after a while, I’d just fall back into that old habit.

Whether he relocated to Wilmington, Goldsboro, Greensboro or Kinston, Freddy couldn’t find the man he wanted to be.

 

Rock Bottom

Instead, he found crack cocaine, a newer form of the powder cocaine he’d used. Crack, which promised a powerful high, brought him to an all-time low in 1998.

“It was like I couldn’t do anything right,” Freddy explains.

He kept promising himself that next time, he’d do the right thing with his paycheck. He’d provide for his family the way he believed a man should.

“Every time I’d get my money, that crack cocaine would just overpower me,” he remembers.

On January 14, 2004, Freddy was arrested again.

 

“The Best Thing”

As soon as the handcuffs clinked onto his wrists, Freddy knew there was only one move left to make.

“That’s when I had made up in my mind what I was going to do,” he says. “That I was going to seek God.”

He started hanging around inmates who talked about the Bible. For a few hours at a time, they gathered in North Carolina’s Wake County Jail to read Scripture and pray.

“I had to make a change from the inside out, not the outside in,” says Freddy.

When he was transferred from jail to a correctional center, Freddy joined Project Nehemiah, a faith-based reentry program based on proven Prison Fellowship curriculum and best practices. The inmates who attended Sunday classes received Christ-centered books and worksheets on everything from creating a budget to strengthening a marriage.

“They teach you how to put God first in everything that you do,” Freddy explains.

Freddy Cooper and mentor Don Fulford.

Don Fulford, the program chairman of Project Nehemiah, has long worked closely with Prison Fellowship staff in the field to develop effective in-prison programming. He became Freddy’s personal mentor. Using Freddy’s “CV” or “civilian volunteer” passes earned with good behavior, the two were able to attend church and eat meals together outside prison walls.

“It was the best thing that had happened to me in a long time,” Freddy recalls, “’cause I really didn’t have anyone who really cared other than my family.”

Having served in prison ministry for over 20 years, Don knew Freddy needed his support. He listened to Freddy talk about his difficult past without letting that past define him.

“The really important thing is to encourage and to let them know that they are better than what they have been,” says Don.

 

Life Renewed

Four years have passed since Freddy was released from prison, and even though he’s always on the move, now it’s for his job. He drives a cab in Raleigh, where he attends his brother-in-law’s church and still keeps in touch with Don.

Freddy chuckles as he describes his new life: “I come to work, go home, study, read my Bible, go to church, go to Bible study, go to Sunday school. That’s all I do now.”

While he credits God and the lessons he learned in reentry unit with a smooth transition to life outside prison, he has experienced personal loss. Two years after his release, he separated from his wife when she refused to stop using drugs.

Still, he’s careful not to condemn old friends struggling with addictions.

“I don’t disassociate myself with those people because I have to show them what the Lord’s doing for me. If I didn’t … then they wouldn’t know the Lord could do that for them.”

Freddy is returning the favor. While he was incarcerated, his family –which includes his two adult children and several siblings – never shunned him. They kept in touch through letters and, eventually, witnessed God's stunning transformation of this man on the move.

“In his letters, he was talking about what he wanted to do, and he was trying to get things together for when he came home,” says Vernon Spinks, Freddy’s pastor and brother-in-law. “And when he came home, that’s exactly what he did.”

Freddy Cooper, the same man who once struggled to stay in one place, is now anchored to his church, where he serves as an usher and transports members to and from services.

And while he’s come a long way, he hasn’t stopped looking forward.

“I hope that my daughters will one day realize that God is the only way to go,” says Freddy. “Other than that, I just want to live for the Lord.”