Eighty year old Osceola Wesley spent the first forty years of his life descending ever deeper into a cycle of drugs and prison. He has spent the last forty years helping others break that cycle.
[In Coatesville, FL], he is a revered figure, for his work as a counselor, for the antidrug marches he led, for the hundreds of people he helped escape addiction and the lives he redeemed and redirected.
"He's a true community hero," says former Chester County Commissioner Colin Hanna, who joined Wesley's antidrug marches during the 1990s. "He's a natural leader with a wonderful way about him. He can be impatient with people who don't share his sense of discipline and self-reliance, yet he has a gentleness and tenderness of heart."
His effectiveness stems in part from what Chester County Judge Anthony Sarcione calls Wesley's "pedigree" - as a drunk, a heroin shooter, a man so desperate for a high he used to boil off the alcohol in paragoric acid to harvest the trace opiates.
Today, Sarcione says, Wesley is "a walking, talking symbol of hope."
The turning point came when he finally hit rock bottom.
He can cite the exact date of his turnaround: Oct. 25, 1973, the day when he dragged himself to the VA hospital in Philadelphia for detox. He had no choice. All his veins were collapsed. His body was pocked with abscesses. His ankles were so swollen he could barely walk.
"I had no more flesh to shoot in," Wesley says. "I had run out."
Wesley's life has taken its toll on his body. In 2002 he was given no more than a few months to live. He was recently diagnosed with diabetes and hepatitis C. With all that in mind, I started seeing his story from the perspective of close to the end of their run. Specifically, I started seeing it from the perspective of someone looking back and asking, "What was my life about? Did it matter?"
Wesley's story could easily have been different. He could easily have let it all go to waste. Instead, he had an enormously positive impact on hundreds of lives. If I put myself in his shoes and ask, "Did it matter," the answer would be a resounding yes.
That's what I want to be able to say when I reach the end of my run. Each of us - regardless of where we are in our lives - has the possibility to say, "Starting today, I choose the path that matters." And the decisions we make and the directions we take from here on out are the way we'll get there.
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It's Coatesville, PA... not Florida...
Posted by: Test | December 10, 2007 at 10:16 PM