Opportunity America: “You Don’t Know My Story”

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Speaker 1: This is Our American Stories, and now it’s time for our Opportunity America series that’s sponsored by Coke Industries. Today we hear the story of Gwen Boyd Willis and how Coke Industries helped her get a second chance. Here’s Robbie with the story.

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Speaker 2: Gwen Boyd Willis was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia.

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Speaker 3: My mother nine was Gwendoline Mitchell, and my father and I was Ernest Boyd. And I lost my father at five years old. He got killed in the automobile accident. So I was raised in a single parent house.

00:01:00
Speaker 2: If it had started out a little harder than it does for most, we wasn’t found that with a little hard work, she would find success.

00:01:08
Speaker 3: I was All American in basketball. I was a state champion in track and field. I had scholarship office all over, but I wasn’t able to go because my mother was sickly, so I had to stay home and take care of her. So then I worked at University of West Georgia College as an assistant chef to about two thousand and five. That’s when I got in trouble. I went to the ATM machine one night with a friend of mine, and when I walked up to the ATM machine, it said, “Would you like another transaction?” So I was like, got money out the machine, and I took the ATM card and I went shopping with the card. So maybe a month went by, some detectives showed up at my door, and my mom came, and she was like, “Two detectives here to see you.” My stomach just dropped, you know. I was like, “Oh, they got me,” you know. So I went to the door. I told my mom I was going with them. So I was sitting in the back seat of the car as we was driving to the police station, and I said, “Lord, do I tell the truth?” And I Holy Spirits said, “Tell the truth.” So by the time we got to the police department, before he even said anything, I said, “I did it.” I just, I just, I did it like that. And I’m so glad that I listened to the oldest Spirit. And because of my honesty, I had nine charges that they had against me. Because of my honesty, they dropped five of my charges. M And when I went to court for my charges, I went in one courtroom, and they did not have enough beds. So, you know, you supposed to go to jail right away. The judge said, “Well, we don’t have enough beds, so you can stay.” They le—they allowed me to stay out of jail and turn myself in in August. So I was allowed to be out for eight months cause they didn’t have a bed for eight months. How I was just preparing myself, like, “Oh, I got to turn myself in in August to go do time of the women’s detention center.” I had to do four months, a hundred and twenty days plus. They had gave me ten years probation. So that day came, and I went at my time in the women’s detention center. Man, what other place? I called it “the jungle.” Maybe like fifty women in one room. It’s a big room with bump beds. You don’t have any privacy. But I remember before I went. The night before I left, my grandmother, she told me. She said, “Well, no, you know the real reason you’re going down there.” I said, “No, I don’t.” She said, “You’re going to do missionary work for the Lord,” and I just, you know, just sugar off, like, “Oh, okay, grandma low and bed hole.” Exactly. When I got in there, I was ministering to the women. They had me singing all the time, one of the correct the officers. She was a very mean spirited lady, very angry, bitter, and I made her my assignment before I left there. And every day when I would pass through the line, you know, we get our food, I would speak. I would come around, I’d say, “Hello, officers, so and so,” and I would say something nice and kind. As I started out, she wouldn’t speak. Eventually, when she started talking to me, she had a sick child at home, so she was dealing with that. And eventually, I was like, “Well, you know, I pray for your daughter.” To day, I would ask how her daughter was doing. Eventually, she was starting, she was talking to me, and people was like, “Wow, she talks to you.” I remember the night before I left, she came and pulled me out to talk to me, and she thanked me for taking the time out. The talked to her. Then my time came home. I was at home. I was like, “So what am I gonna do now?” I got a call out the blue from this lady from Westwood College, and she was just giving me this whole talk. “You want to go to school and this, that, and the third,” and I was like, “I can’t go to school. I don’t have any money for that.” She was like, “I can get you in school.” So she came to the house, and we did my application and everything, and I ended up going to Westwood College to major in Criminal Justice Administration.

00:06:39
Speaker 2: But despite putting the work in to complete her bachelor’s degree, she found that her criminal record was holding her back.

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Speaker 3: Every job I applied to, they would see that, you know, I have this fabulous resume, but when they checked, my background check would come back with the feelings on it. And that was a lot. That was disappointment, you know, doom and gloom. And I can’t tell you how many tears I cried because I was passed over from some great jobs. Even recently, last year, I applied to the Fullding County Detention Center, you know, to be a counselor there, and went through the interviews. I went about two interviews, and they hired me. They were just waiting for my background check to come back. And I was honest, and I told the lady, you know, “Hey, I have this on my record, but I’m in the process of getting my my record pardner. I’m waiting to hear back from a judge.” And she was like, “Well, we’ll just wait and see.” So when my record came back, she was like, “We can’t hire you because you have this on your record.” But she did encourage me to come back and apply again once I got parton. So, yeah, I applied for various jobs, and that having their record, having those feelings on my record to stop me from getting hired.

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Speaker 2: Gwen knew she wasn’t who her record said she was. She was determined to get her record pardoned, and she went through the process twice, all on her own.

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Speaker 3: This happened back in two thousand and five. You know, it had been sitting there all this time. I’m not there personally anymore. I’m a totally different person from back then, you know. So the first time I tried, I was gathering the paperwork. It was like trying to pull the tooth because it was like I didn’t get no acknowledgement. It was like I didn’t get no respect. You know, it’s like they don’t—it feels like they don’t care when you’re trying to do it on your own. I paid the moneys, you got to pay all these fees, and I applied, and they said, “No. I want you waiting four or six months for an answer to come back.” So I went through that twice, and they came back, and they was like, “No, it don’t. You don’t meet the qualifications for a parting.” So I had talked to a friend of mine who was a full and counter dip of the share. He was like, “Gwen, you’re gonna have to get a lawyer, no doubt.”

00:09:40
Speaker 1: Gwen Willis’s record did not reflect her heart, her spirit, or what she could do out in the world. When we come back, more of our Opportunity America series. Gwen Willis’s story here on Our American Stories, and we’re back with Our American Stories and the story of Gwen Boyd Willis, part of our Opportunity America series. When we last left off, Gwen had applied for multiple jobs, but because of her criminal record—something she’d done fifteen years ago—she faced rejection. Upon rejection, she then tried twice on her own to get her record pardoned and was rejected twice. Here’s Robbie with the rest of the story.

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Speaker 2: Little did Gwen know that help would come from a very unlikely place, a pulp and paper company called Georgia Pacific.

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Speaker 4: My name is is Michael Davis. I’m the assistant general counsel at Georgia Pacific, based out of Atlanta. Georgia Coke Industries, which, you know, the larger company of which Georgia Pacific is is one part, has a fairly extensive pro bono practice. Georgia Justice was one of the groups that was identified as doing work that we were supportive of. You know, a big part of this effort was the company saying we’re okay with you taking time to go work on these pro bono efforts. Georgia Justice actually came over to the GP Center. Part of what they do is to assist people who have served their time with getting a pardon. So I said, “That’s what I’d like to do,” and that’s, they then went over and met my client.

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Speaker 3: When the Georgia Justice Project—when you go for an initial interview—you go in with about thirty other people, and they go through, it’s like a training course where they explained and show everything that they do to help you along with the process. But you had to be selected out of those thirty people. I was selected out of those thirty people. They chose my case. We would meet up in the conference room, and before we even would get started on my case, you know, he would sit and talk to me, ask questions about me. You know, he was want to know how’s my health and how’s my family. He showed how he was really concerned. You know. It wasn’t so much is, “Oh, we’re gonna jump right in him. I’m gonna get you in to get you out.” People don’t have to do nothing for you, you know. And even though he was doing the pro bono, it just let me know that this man is really interested, not in just my case, but he interested in and what’s going on in my life.

00:12:54
Speaker 4: So it was probably anywhere between, I’d say, forty and fifty hours collectively. I mean, doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s, you know, you’re an hour here, an hour there. I got to know her, got her background. We were both sort of learning as we went about what needed to be done. She was. Her story was absolutely fascinating. You know, she had made a mistake as a young person. When she was confronted, when the police came to her, she acknowledged what she’d done, she took responsibility for it, and just an amazing, amazing story about how much work she put into her education and trying to get her life back on track. She was really struggling, but she kept at it. I mean, she’s just a very determined person that certainly came through and talking to her and then seeing everything that she had done. So we then began to pull together all of the documentation that was necessary for the part of application. Gwen is so determined that it, it made my job very easy because I take when we need to have this document or that document, and she would go get it and produce it. I talked to the board, got an investigator assigned to her case. They then conducted the investigation, and they finally got through with their investigation and let her know in August that she had in fact received her pardon.

00:14:24
Speaker 3: Man. Yes, I actually went to Bible study, you know, small gathering of people, and I came home, and I took my dog out that night and went to the mailbox. I saw that it was a leather from the Georgia, State of Georgia. So I came into the house. I was nervous, so I was like, oh, I didn’t know what it was, but I still was nervous. So I sat down and I opened it. And when I opened, I saw that it was these big old letters and black bowl levers that said “parting.” I didn’t even read the paper. I just saw that I got my party. I just saw that that was it, the big Bowl letters and parting, and I just sat there, and I was crying. Oh, I cried. I mean, I cried hard tears from my heart, but they were tears of joy. And, you know, it’s just as I sat there, I began to think about everything I had went through, all the “nos” from jobs. I thought about just, you know, having a record; a stigma comes with it, so people automatically look at you in a negative way. And it felt like a burden was lifted off of me, awake was lifted out for me. I mean, I’m free. I got a new, clean slate. And then I began to read what it said and just the wording of the partying. I mean, it’s so amazing. You know, everything has been re established back to me that was taken away from me. You know, everything has been forgiven. You know, my record has been forgiven. And that’s just, I’m sw elated. That’s just lost for words.

00:16:39
Speaker 4: You know. Just when I met with her here, I mean, she was—I won’t say she was a changed person—but you could just tell weight had been lifted from her shoulders, so you just had. She was excited at the possibilities that were now in front of her.

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Speaker 5: You don’t know monstory, harb, the change is I’ve been through. You don’t know my pen Halana had to endure to get him.

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Speaker 6: You don’t know much stranggos. Don’t try to fit them mind, because my worship, my washiap is food.

00:17:47
Speaker 3: You want to speak to that, huh?

00:17:52
Speaker 1: And no, we were not expecting that, and you were listening to a joyful and triumphant Gwen Willis. “People don’t have to do nothing for you,” Gwen said. “I was forgiven. I was so elated, I was lost of words,” and then she sang that song for us. We know your struggles, Gwen, we do, and we love you for how you dealt with them and endured them. And that laugh, my goodness! We all wish we had one like that, but we can’t make it up. That’s real, that’s you. And thank you for sharing all that you shared. Thank you, Robbie, for the great job you did on this. Thank you to the folks at Georgia Pacific, and of course, the folks at Coke Industries. More than sixty five thousand people across America are employed by Coke, and there’s a good chance that their work intersects with your own story in some way. The great folks at Coke make products that help improve medical devices, consumer electronics, vehicle safety, fabrics for clothing, filtration for clean water, and innovations for popular household brands. In the process, they’re creating jobs and opening paths to uppportunity for everyone to create their own American story. To learn more about Coke’s incredible work, go to cokei n d dot com. That’s K O C H I N D dot com. Gwen Willis’s story, a part of our Opportunity America series. Here on Our American Stories.