CHOOSING REDEMPTION IS POSSIBLE

When evangelist Thaddeus Holliday talks to juveniles at the Duval
County jail, they aren't listening to the voice of perfection.

They're listening to the voice of redemption.

Holliday kicked a crack cocaine habit that addled his senses for more
than a decade -- and fed a temper so volatile that he wound up fatally
shooting his brother, LaVan, in 1988, during an argument that occurred
at a family gathering to mourn their father's death.

"We got into a fight, and I grabbed a gun," Holliday, now 44,
recalled. "I intended to shoot him in the shoulder, but I wound up
killing him.

"When I was in jail, I really wanted to die. For four days, I was
really figuring out how to kill myself."

Holliday never got a chance to carry out that plan, even though he
wonders today how he managed to survive anyway. When a judge gave him
a 10-year suspended sentence and three years' probation, he resumed
his self-destructive crack habit.

But when Holliday's drug use got him arrested again, he wound up
spending five months in state prison and four years at Dinsmore
Correctional Institute. It was during that time when three ministers
at a Bible study class there -- a former Klansman, a Messianic Jew and
a Baptist minister -- convinced him that he could turn his life around.

Since he was released in 1996, Holliday has been trying to do just
that.

Not just by being a responsible worker -- he's a roofer. Not by just
being a good father to his four children and a good husband to his
wife of 19 years. He continues to turn his life around by counseling
juveniles on how to avoid his fate.

"Many times, it seems like it doesn't bear fruit," Holliday said. "But
a lot of times I look back on many things that my father told me, and
I realize that my life experiences have taught me that a lot of what
he said was true. ... Sometimes, it takes time for them to realize
that."

The Ribault High School graduate, who grew up in Springfield, did a
stint in the Marines and learned how to be a roofer. But on a working
trip to West Palm Beach in 1983, Holliday and some of his friends went
out to buy marijuana and wound up buying crack instead.

"When we got to the place [to buy marijuana], we saw that they were
selling little squares of what we now know to be crack," Holliday
said. "We got to smoking that crack, and we couldn't stop."

For his part, Holliday prefers that the wayward juveniles he ministers
to pay more attention to people like his mentor, the Rev. George
Harvey Jr. of Mount Charity Missionary Church, and others who had the
good sense to avoid drugs altogether.

But some of them need to pay attention to Holliday -- to grasp the
magnitude of the tragedies that drugs and crime can inflict on one's
life.

And to know that in spite of the crimes they've committed, there's
still a path to redemption.

If they choose it.