'She never saw the complete me.'
by Louis Llovio (Richmond Times-Dispatch)
The last time Maurice Morgan smoked crack was a Monday night.
It was 2009, and his mother had died the year before.
Morgan, 40 at the time, was a recovering addict who'd struggled with relapses before. He'd fought off the urge more often than not, but sometimes — too often, he says — the urges won out.
That Monday night was one such occasion. There was something about the knot in the stomach that addicts feel, that physical sense that you need to — haveto! — get a hit that he just couldn't resist.
So Maurice Morgan did what he'd done since he was 19. He gave in. He got high. He felt terrible afterward, as he did after each relapse. It was crushing to see the progress, the hard work to stay sober, wiped away with the flick of a lighter.
Once he'd sobered up, he confessed to his wife and begged for forgiveness. That Sunday, he went to Mount Gilead, his church, and prayed. He prayed hard. He told two church elders what he was going through, and they prayed hard, too. Morgan, 44 now and with the energy of a man half that age, says he hasn't picked up a crack pipe since that night.
The relapse solidified a commitment to recovery and to help others who have been dealt a bad hand.
Morgan has since become a mental health and youth counselor, and the agency he started two years ago, New Pathways Youth and Mental Health Services in South Richmond, works to help troubled kids and people with mental health issues.
But Morgan's story doesn't begin or end with New Pathways. That's just the latest iteration, a jumping-off point, he says, in a life that has seen its share of drama. It's a story of second, third and fourth chances and of missed opportunities and new beginnings.
Of homelessness and love; of drugs and rehabilitation.
But if you ask Morgan, his story — regardless of any future success, the number of people he'll help in a lifetime, the lives he'll touch and save — will never have a happy ending.
The only person whose approval Morgan wants-whose approval he desperately seeks-is his mother's, but she has passed away.
For all his accomplishments, a recovering crack addict who now owns a local counseling agency will never be able to have his late mom's approval Morgan wants — whose approval he desperately seeks — is his mother's. But she's dead, and Morgan doesn't buy the sentiment that she's watching from above.
She never saw him clean up and get an education. She never saw him start a business and fulfill his potential. All she saw was the little boy who grew up to be a crack addict.
"The worse thing is that I never got to show her that I got my stuff together," Morgan says. It's a mantra — a heartbreaking repetition of one man's greatest regret, a painful reminder that we've got to be good while we've got the chance.
"She never saw the complete me."
Morgan grew up at 1302 N. 37th St. in Richmond's Church Hill neighborhood. It was a quiet neighborhood of small houses with neat lawns where everyone knew and looked out for one another. The kids on the block went to school together and then played games in the woods and kickball on the street.
Morgan's mother, Daisy Banks Morgan, was a constant presence in his life and that of his sister, Sabrina. For 42 years, Daisy taught third grade — more than 30 of those in Room 119 at Chimborazo Elementary School.
A graduate of Virginia Union University, she brought up her children to follow the rules, to study, to be responsible.
But Morgan's upbringing wasn't idyllic.
His father left when he was 3. One of Morgan's few memories of his dad involves barricading himself and his sister in a room to protect themselves from their father. Another time, his father took him to a Harlem Globetrotters game and fell asleep.
After his dad left, there were issues with the men his mother dated. When Morgan was about 8, one boyfriend hit his mother. Police, he says, were regular visitors during that relationship.
Still, Morgan remembers his upbringing positively. "It was fun. She was fun. It was a good life."
Standing outside the house on 37th Street a couple of weeks ago, Morgan spoke of his childhood as a boy sheltered from the world would. It was ephemeral, but filled with games and Hardy Boys novels.
"There wasn't a whole lot of foolishness going on," he says.
The foolishness began in 1989.
On one hand, Morgan's story is a cliche: a Hollywood film penned by a screenwriter looking to cash in with a tearjerker.
On the other hand, it's a cautionary tale of a kid whose stupid decision, compounded by dozens — hundreds — of other stupid decisions, led him down a path that he somehow survived.
In the summer of 1989, Morgan was working at a gas station and had a baby on the way. He was 19.
An old friend came back to the neighborhood and introduced Morgan to crack cocaine.
It was the middle of the crack epidemic that devoured neighborhoods across the country between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s. It was a brutal time when thousands were getting hooked and a wave of violence turned some areas into war zones.
Morgan, whose daughter LaStarr was born that year, was quickly hooked and falling deeper and deeper into the life of drugs. He kept a job for a while, but then went on drug binges that would last for weeks.
He spent much of those years' time smoking crack with strangers in abandoned houses, traveling with friends who were armed, and stealing to get enough money to buy drugs.
Eventually, Daisy — his anchor — had enough and would not let him back in the house.
He moved in with a family friend who lived in the city's Highland Park neighborhood, which only made matters worse.
After a few years, Morgan cleaned himself up and moved in with a girlfriend. It was the mid-1990s.
He went back to school and to work. He also began a career as a disc jockey and, using the name DJ Reese, worked at several local radio stations and at a popular nightclub.
But one day, after letting a friend move in, he opened a bag belonging to that friend and discovered his stash.
Morgan went careening off the rails and back into a life of drugs. The binges lasted longer this time. He lost his job and his apartment.
He remembers begging for change outside a pizza shop he had gone to as a kid; he would ask for 50 cents at a time until he had the $5 it took to buy a rock. In an effort to get off the streets for even a short time, he would walk into police stations hoping to get arrested, or threaten to kill himself so he would get hospitalized for a night or two.
By 2003, Morgan was close to rock bottom. He was broke and homeless, and a dealer he owed money to was looking for him.
Morgan, who had tried to get clean before, was on a waiting list to get into the Freedom House, the soup kitchen, homeless shelter and transitional housing program.
As he waited to get in, he spent his nights in a parking lot attendant's shack on Eighth Street downtown.
For a few days, he showered in the pool area of a local hotel and, cleaned up, snuck into the dining room of another to eat the free continental breakfast for guests.
It was during this time that he went to work for a high-end furniture retailer in Shockoe Bottom and began to rebuild his life.
Over the next year, Morgan went back to school and was introduced to his wife, Tonya, who also wanted to open a group home.
Morgan says he tried to tell her that he was damaged, but she stayed. After four years of dating, they were married.
Just as his life was beginning to turn around, the family learned Daisy was dying.
"It hurt me to see her suffer so much. She was such a good woman and, by the end, she had to have a tracheotomy to breathe and feeding tube just to get nourishment," he says.
Morgan spent as much time with her as he could.
But he says that she was in such bad shape, she barely knew he was there, let alone how he had changed; that he was no longer the crack addict that she had to turn away but on his way to becoming the man she brought him up to be. Daisy died July 24, 2008.
Morgan did the best he could to cope, fighting the urge to return to drugs. He says that at times, he would give Tonya his paycheck to avoid temptation. And he did until that Monday, the last time he smoked crack.
"I felt so stupid," he says. "I couldn't keep feeling stupid anymore."
Today, the agency he owns employs more than 20 people and has about 70 clients. Among his goals is to open a private housing complex where people on public assistance can live and be held accountable; and where they can get job training and life skills to help them climb out of poverty. This is something he wants to see government-run agencies do as well.
In other words, he wants to pass on the lessons of responsibility and self-reliance that Daisy taught him to those who need it — the lessons he was too strung out to follow for so many years.
"I've always had it in me to change," he says. "I always wanted to get this right."
It was 2009, and his mother had died the year before.
Morgan, 40 at the time, was a recovering addict who'd struggled with relapses before. He'd fought off the urge more often than not, but sometimes — too often, he says — the urges won out.
That Monday night was one such occasion. There was something about the knot in the stomach that addicts feel, that physical sense that you need to — haveto! — get a hit that he just couldn't resist.
So Maurice Morgan did what he'd done since he was 19. He gave in. He got high. He felt terrible afterward, as he did after each relapse. It was crushing to see the progress, the hard work to stay sober, wiped away with the flick of a lighter.
Once he'd sobered up, he confessed to his wife and begged for forgiveness. That Sunday, he went to Mount Gilead, his church, and prayed. He prayed hard. He told two church elders what he was going through, and they prayed hard, too. Morgan, 44 now and with the energy of a man half that age, says he hasn't picked up a crack pipe since that night.
The relapse solidified a commitment to recovery and to help others who have been dealt a bad hand.
Morgan has since become a mental health and youth counselor, and the agency he started two years ago, New Pathways Youth and Mental Health Services in South Richmond, works to help troubled kids and people with mental health issues.
But Morgan's story doesn't begin or end with New Pathways. That's just the latest iteration, a jumping-off point, he says, in a life that has seen its share of drama. It's a story of second, third and fourth chances and of missed opportunities and new beginnings.
Of homelessness and love; of drugs and rehabilitation.
But if you ask Morgan, his story — regardless of any future success, the number of people he'll help in a lifetime, the lives he'll touch and save — will never have a happy ending.
The only person whose approval Morgan wants-whose approval he desperately seeks-is his mother's, but she has passed away.
For all his accomplishments, a recovering crack addict who now owns a local counseling agency will never be able to have his late mom's approval Morgan wants — whose approval he desperately seeks — is his mother's. But she's dead, and Morgan doesn't buy the sentiment that she's watching from above.
She never saw him clean up and get an education. She never saw him start a business and fulfill his potential. All she saw was the little boy who grew up to be a crack addict.
"The worse thing is that I never got to show her that I got my stuff together," Morgan says. It's a mantra — a heartbreaking repetition of one man's greatest regret, a painful reminder that we've got to be good while we've got the chance.
"She never saw the complete me."
Morgan grew up at 1302 N. 37th St. in Richmond's Church Hill neighborhood. It was a quiet neighborhood of small houses with neat lawns where everyone knew and looked out for one another. The kids on the block went to school together and then played games in the woods and kickball on the street.
Morgan's mother, Daisy Banks Morgan, was a constant presence in his life and that of his sister, Sabrina. For 42 years, Daisy taught third grade — more than 30 of those in Room 119 at Chimborazo Elementary School.
A graduate of Virginia Union University, she brought up her children to follow the rules, to study, to be responsible.
But Morgan's upbringing wasn't idyllic.
His father left when he was 3. One of Morgan's few memories of his dad involves barricading himself and his sister in a room to protect themselves from their father. Another time, his father took him to a Harlem Globetrotters game and fell asleep.
After his dad left, there were issues with the men his mother dated. When Morgan was about 8, one boyfriend hit his mother. Police, he says, were regular visitors during that relationship.
Still, Morgan remembers his upbringing positively. "It was fun. She was fun. It was a good life."
Standing outside the house on 37th Street a couple of weeks ago, Morgan spoke of his childhood as a boy sheltered from the world would. It was ephemeral, but filled with games and Hardy Boys novels.
"There wasn't a whole lot of foolishness going on," he says.
The foolishness began in 1989.
On one hand, Morgan's story is a cliche: a Hollywood film penned by a screenwriter looking to cash in with a tearjerker.
On the other hand, it's a cautionary tale of a kid whose stupid decision, compounded by dozens — hundreds — of other stupid decisions, led him down a path that he somehow survived.
In the summer of 1989, Morgan was working at a gas station and had a baby on the way. He was 19.
An old friend came back to the neighborhood and introduced Morgan to crack cocaine.
It was the middle of the crack epidemic that devoured neighborhoods across the country between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s. It was a brutal time when thousands were getting hooked and a wave of violence turned some areas into war zones.
Morgan, whose daughter LaStarr was born that year, was quickly hooked and falling deeper and deeper into the life of drugs. He kept a job for a while, but then went on drug binges that would last for weeks.
He spent much of those years' time smoking crack with strangers in abandoned houses, traveling with friends who were armed, and stealing to get enough money to buy drugs.
Eventually, Daisy — his anchor — had enough and would not let him back in the house.
He moved in with a family friend who lived in the city's Highland Park neighborhood, which only made matters worse.
After a few years, Morgan cleaned himself up and moved in with a girlfriend. It was the mid-1990s.
He went back to school and to work. He also began a career as a disc jockey and, using the name DJ Reese, worked at several local radio stations and at a popular nightclub.
But one day, after letting a friend move in, he opened a bag belonging to that friend and discovered his stash.
Morgan went careening off the rails and back into a life of drugs. The binges lasted longer this time. He lost his job and his apartment.
He remembers begging for change outside a pizza shop he had gone to as a kid; he would ask for 50 cents at a time until he had the $5 it took to buy a rock. In an effort to get off the streets for even a short time, he would walk into police stations hoping to get arrested, or threaten to kill himself so he would get hospitalized for a night or two.
By 2003, Morgan was close to rock bottom. He was broke and homeless, and a dealer he owed money to was looking for him.
Morgan, who had tried to get clean before, was on a waiting list to get into the Freedom House, the soup kitchen, homeless shelter and transitional housing program.
As he waited to get in, he spent his nights in a parking lot attendant's shack on Eighth Street downtown.
For a few days, he showered in the pool area of a local hotel and, cleaned up, snuck into the dining room of another to eat the free continental breakfast for guests.
It was during this time that he went to work for a high-end furniture retailer in Shockoe Bottom and began to rebuild his life.
Over the next year, Morgan went back to school and was introduced to his wife, Tonya, who also wanted to open a group home.
Morgan says he tried to tell her that he was damaged, but she stayed. After four years of dating, they were married.
Just as his life was beginning to turn around, the family learned Daisy was dying.
"It hurt me to see her suffer so much. She was such a good woman and, by the end, she had to have a tracheotomy to breathe and feeding tube just to get nourishment," he says.
Morgan spent as much time with her as he could.
But he says that she was in such bad shape, she barely knew he was there, let alone how he had changed; that he was no longer the crack addict that she had to turn away but on his way to becoming the man she brought him up to be. Daisy died July 24, 2008.
Morgan did the best he could to cope, fighting the urge to return to drugs. He says that at times, he would give Tonya his paycheck to avoid temptation. And he did until that Monday, the last time he smoked crack.
"I felt so stupid," he says. "I couldn't keep feeling stupid anymore."
Today, the agency he owns employs more than 20 people and has about 70 clients. Among his goals is to open a private housing complex where people on public assistance can live and be held accountable; and where they can get job training and life skills to help them climb out of poverty. This is something he wants to see government-run agencies do as well.
In other words, he wants to pass on the lessons of responsibility and self-reliance that Daisy taught him to those who need it — the lessons he was too strung out to follow for so many years.
"I've always had it in me to change," he says. "I always wanted to get this right."
