When Walter Coppage encountered Journey to New Life for the first time during his incarceration, he admits, he was in a dark place. “When I met Rita, I was like 63, and my mind had allowed me to believe that I didn’t stand a chance coming out of prison,” Walter said. “I was an old man, and my credentials weren’t the type that any employer would immediately and anxiously want to hire. This is the stuff that was in my mind. No one told me this. I had never had a conversation with anybody about these inner thoughts that I had. So when I met Rita and Georgia, and they explained to me what they were doing, that was my light of hope. Rita and Georgia, they were that ray of hope that I so desperately needed.”
Walter was afraid that he would re-offend once he was released from prison. He couldn’t see a path in front of him that would allow him to make money, clothe himself and be self-sustainable at his age. He had never panhandled before, and he didn’t think he had it in him to start. He’d lost out on important things in his life during the 32 years he’d spent in and out of prison. Perhaps the most important being his son who died at the tender age of 16, when Walter was just 44 years old. “I didn’t get to see him as the old man, and he didn’t get to see me,” he said. That loss affected Walter deeply, it took years for him to come to terms with the loss. “It’s a never-ending heartbreak until you realize, until you understand that the 16 years that he was here, that’s what he was allotted, 16 years,” he said.
But Walter’s entire outlook changed once he met Journey to New Life’s Rita and Georgia.
“When Rita and Georgia came along, I knew God was talking to me deep then. I knew He was because once I started talking to those ladies, I couldn’t wait to come home,” he said. “I felt like I had the beginning of a support team. And if you’ve ever met Rita, you know, she is just so beautiful. She’s got this little light in her eyes. Her eyes twinkle, and they will make you want to do the right thing, you know.”
And doing the right thing is what Walter is focused on every single day. He was released on March 7th, 2019. By April 1st, just days later, he had a job. He was so excited that, even though he says he’s not computer literate, he turned to social media to announce his employment to the world. When the pandemic hit a year later, Walter’s company got hit hard. Management reduced staff from around 200 to eight. Walter was one of the eight.
To say he feels blessed would be an understatement. Things were never easy for Walter growing up, and rarely has he been able to say things have just fallen into place like he feels they are now. When he describes the circumstances of the first time he got in trouble, you get a unique look into a reality many of us can’t even imagine.
“You remember when you went to school, and they had the little paints with blue, red, yellow and orange in there?” he asked. “I went into the store because I couldn’t afford any, and I stole some paint for school — and some M&M’s. And I got caught, and that was the first. They took me to the juvenile space, and they kept me there until my mother got there the next day. They told her they wanted to keep me overnight and process me. Well, that was the first time that I ever slept in my own bed. That’s the first time I got three meals a day. The sheets were clean. So I actually got put in jail, technically as a kid, and the living conditions of the jail were a thousand times better than the environment that they took me from.”
Walter credits Journey to New Life for helping to turn so much darkness into light. “What they gave me was a new life,” he said. “A new life with the desire to go out here and do the right thing and make a difference, you know, and it started here.”
All those dark hopeless thoughts, they’re gone now. I know I can go down there and see Rita. She’ll help me out. She’ll give me a kind word. She’ll let me in. She won’t tell me, ‘oh you can’t come in here.’ She’s a champion. That’s all I got on her, she’s just a champion.— Walter Coppage
Today, Walter is still working at the same job. He’s staying with his sister, helping her take care of her granddaughters that she has custody of, and he says he just does the best he can each day.
“When God puts something together for you, it might not be what you like, but at the end of the day, if you can look at yourself and say, for that day, that you’ve done the best that you could, then nobody can get mad at you. Nobody can get mad at you,” Walter said. “Nobody should ever get mad at you, if you’ve done your best.”
