On Beechmont right across the Mount Washington Kroger there is a hub of down-to-earth people with interesting stories. Once again I found myself standing beneath the Tom Roth Place sign, chatting with someone and learning about them. It was the same day I met Jeff and saw my old friend Garry aka Pops.
Jeff had disappeared to look for Pops who also vanished after being kicked out of The Bridge for dozing off. This left me alone with Terri, a friendly woman with tough hands and a gentle smile. She stepped out of The Bridge to check on Pops after he got tossed. Knowing Jeff was on the case to find Pops, Terri sat down on the bench and chatted with me.
Meet Terri
Terri had it all she said. She had the big house in Sherwood Forest, four beautiful daughters, and a thriving carpentry business that she ran with her loving husband. “I was living the dream,” she told me. Active in their church at Salem United Methodist, Terri recalls not being able to understand how she had it so good. Her family was healthy and business was great. “I remember crying, telling God that I felt bad for being so blessed. Why do I have it so good, but others don’t?” Terri laughed a little. “I guess God showed me.”
Right out of the Book of Job, for Terri, the lord gave and then he took away. Terri’s children were 17, 13, 11, and 9 when her husband died from Lymphoma.
“It was horrible,” Terri said. “Everything got thrown off balance – our family, the business, everything. Eventually Terri succumbed to the overwhelming grief from her husband’s death and turned to drinking. It wasn’t long before her extended family designated her to be an unfit mother and took her daughters away. But it was the empty house, loneliness, and snowballing sorrow that eventually caused her to become homeless and start using heroin.
“I was living in abandoned houses on Eastern Avenue for a while. I would pay people in the area $5 to use their showers,” Terri told me. “But I never stole or prostituted. I paid for my habit by working as a carpenter. I was always working and functioning.”
After about six years of hell, Terri finally got clean and has remained clean for the last eight years. She now lives in an apartment in Mount Washington. She lets those who are down on their luck like Jeff and Garry take showers at her place – at no charge. “It can happen to anyone,” she said.
Terri said she’s been to 12 funerals for heroin overdoses and performed CPR on five overdosing strangers.
“Do you see heroin use declining at all?” I asked her.
“Yea a little,” Terri replied. “Most of the users are dead now and some have turned to meth. Meth is coming back because people are scared of heroin.”
Family
Terri says she has a great relationship with her children and her grandchildren and sees them all often. Her oldest daughter owns a business in Milford. “When I see my grandbabies, it just brightens my life up.”
By this time Jeff had come back after finding Garry. “He was getting a tattoo!” Jeff said with his contagious laugh. Terri wiped away a tear that came after talking about her grandchildren and chuckled at the idea of Pops getting ink so suddenly.
Earlier Terri gave Jeff a cigarette. “Here you go,” Jeff said to Terri and handed her a beer from his bag. Terri opened it up and poured it into a UDF cup. She thanked him for the returned favor.
I admire the way the folks at Tom Roth Place look after each other. It may just be a beer or a cigarette that they gift to one another, but the gesture alone is powerful. A single beer or cigarette can be worth gold to some. It’s not common for the average person to just give away gold. Whatever the currency may be, it’s comforting to watch them share what little they have with each other.
I shook hands with Terri and Jeff before I left. “Come back anytime,” Jeff said.
“I will,” I replied.
Related article: Related article: Anderson is Disconnected and Disengaged: Here’s How We Could Fix That and Save Lives
Did you miss Beechmont Stories (Escape from Mount Washington)? Check it out here.
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another great story….from happy..to sad… hopeful…Not sure if I read it all right…but, if so/probably the beer not the best drink for her(your subject) to have
BUT…she’s come a lonnnnnnnnggggggg way…God bless her for all she’s been through! Hugs to her!..M.J.
I seen this posted on fb. I was actual best friends with Terri’s daughter growing up. I remember going to her house all the time in Sherwood after school (her daughter and I went to nagel) before her life took a turn for the worst. I mean, at the time I was really young so I never knew why my bestie had to go live with her grandpa. Thankfully her grandpa lived in Eastgate, so I was still able to see my bestie all the time. Crazy story: her daughter and I were passangers in a really bad car accident when we had snuck out her grandpa’s to go hang with boys. My family obviously found out that I wasn’t actually at the movies and staying the night at her grandpa’s. I was basically not allowed to hang with her anymore…. I say all of that to say this: Terri was an amazing mother and when everything happened the way it did, her daughters all dealt with it in their own way. All they wanted was to be back home with their parents. I watched the light fade from Terri’s eyes and i watched a family completely get torn apart by grief, loss, pain, and addiction. I just seen along with this that Terri has passed, and it’s heart breaking. It’s nice to see that she never lost that big heart of hers, even after everything she had been through.