Texarkana GED Graduate
Inspires Young Students by Sharing Life Story
by Marie Martin
Reprint from the Texarkana Gazette 10/19/08
Thomas Larey and instructor Deboray Buckley
proudly display some of his accomplishments
Being shot twice, stabbed once and serving two prison terms would leave some people hopeless.
But not Thomas Larey, who said he’s gotten a second chance at life and would not let “the past predict the future.”
“The old Tom is dead. This is the new Tom,” Larey said of himself after speaking to students at the Bowie-Cass Adult Education Cooperative in Texarkana, Texas.
Larey lived 19 of his 55 years for drugs before becoming a youth minister and a college student pursuing a certificate in substance-abuse counseling.
Holding up his GED certificate, he said, “The proudest moment in my life was when I went to the high school and was given my GED. This was better than getting a PhD.”
Twenty or so students ranging from ages 18 to 35 listened intently as he spoke.
“Apply yourself. You deserve to give yourself no less than the best,” Larey said.
Debra Buckley, Larey’s teacher at the education cooperative, said that’s just what Larey did—“kept plugging on.”
“Mr. Larey came with a positive attitude and made sacrifices to get to this class. He worked at it, even riding the city bus to take an hour trip that may have been a 10 to 15 minute trip by car. He walked in the rain and during cold weather,” she said of his three months at the cooperative before attaining his GED. “‘He’s still making sacrifices.”
Dean Ransdell, director of Adult Education, said Larey should be an inspiration to those who think there is no hope or second chances.
Ransdell and the staff at the cooperative on Lincoln Avenue asked Larey to speak to new students to encourage them to beat the odds. She hopes others will attend Bowie-Cass Adult Education Cooperative and gain a new future.
The cooperative is a partner of Texarkana Independent School District. It is funded by federal and state funds and assist adults as young as 17 to complete a series of tests in writing, social studies, science, literature and mathematics to gain a GED and many other program goals.
Larey attends Texarkana College and hopes to have a certificate in May.
There was a time though when the only thing able to hold Larey’s attention was the next score of crack cocaine. Eight years ago, something miraculous happened that turned his life around. He was healed of a 14-month paralysis while attending a local church. But even then, he still could not stop the drug use.
Just after the healing, his sister, Joyce Rodgers, who died in April 2007, found him at a crack house. He remembers her saying, “Forget my name, forget my address.”
“She’d always been my safety net. She’d feed me. She wouldn’t want to see me in the streets,” he recalls of his sister.
With his sole support gone, he ended up living under a bridge at Kansas City Southern near Fourth Street in Texarkana—healed of his paralysis, but still gripped
by a severe drug addiction.
The miracle became complete when he was hospitalized with blood clots in his legs. After four or five days without any street drugs in his system, Larey says, he saw himself for the first time in a long time. He said one day he walked into the hospital bathroom and thought he saw someone in the mirror walk behind him.
“When I looked again, I realized it was me. I looked so bad. I didn’t think it was me,” said Larey, who, after seeing himself without a drug haze, sat on his hospital bed and sobbed for hours. “I rolled out of the bed on my knees and asked God to please show me a better way.”
Larey told the doctors he needed to get to a rehab. He landed in Texarkana’s Living Hope. Although he did not believe in rehab cures for lifers, he said he had a new determination—a God-given intervention.
The decision to go to a rehab did not convince his sister of a changed life. He thought she’d be there for him again. But Larey recalled that his sister, who died in April of 2007, once told him if he did not have a complete change in lifestyle and dedicate his life to Christ, he would continue his destructive path and eventually die—like most of his childhood friends.
He also has a younger brother in Texas Department of Corrections.
“It’s doubtful he’ll ever get out,” Larey said.
Rodgers, a church-going, productive citizen, wasn’t convinced of Larey’s sincerity until just before she died, he said.
Remembering his time at the rehab, he said, “I didn’t have the white knuckle withdrawals. I didn’t want it anymore. I didn’t crave it. No stress, no desire.”
In 2003, with his new life and hopeful future, Larey decided to turn himself in for outstanding felony warrants.
“I should have served 25 years,” said Larey, having completed a four-year stint at Arkansas’ notorious Cummins Prison Farm in 1968. “But I got five years and served 22 months.
He credits local pastor, elder Thomas Turner of Texarkana, Ark., for encouraging him as a new believer.
“I am a born again Christian,” he said. “Pastor Turner never gave up on me.”
After Thursday’s speech, Larey expressed his thankfulness to the cooperative staff at Bowie-Cass for letting him attend the educational facility.
“All of my life I have been failing and quitting. But this I earned by studying and working for it,” he said. “Thank you for not running me off.”
Thursday, Larey counseled the students against using the same justifications he used during his early years. He said many attach labels and place blame for past failures.
“Don’t use racism as an excuse, or the system. You have the ability to succeed,” said Larey, a member of the National Adult Education Honor Society. “Nothing about your past can hold you down. Shake it off. You can’t let that stop you.
“Don’t let a flat tire or a car quitting keep you away. Ride the bus, walk,” he said. “You’ll be rewarded for your efforts.”
Larey said he wished his parents, who provided well for him as a child, and his deceased siblings had lived to see his change.
“Now I have a purpose, meaningful life. I’m fulfilled,” he said.
To learn more about Bowie-Cass Adult Education
Cooperative and its services, call 903-794-2858.
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