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Friday, Oct. 30, 2009

Striking gold with a good hire

For any employer, finding a good hire is like finding treasure.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Macon struck gold when it hired Pamela Lightsey in 1998.

Good hires naturally strengthen their organizations, but if they’re like Lightsey, they also strengthen their communities making them better places to live.

I heard Lightsey talk last week at the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People banquet about why she’s so passionate about her work. She received the group’s Community Service Award for her work with Project Safe Neighborhood, a group of local law enforcement, community members and churches that coordinate activities aimed at improving conditions in the area’s troubled neighborhoods.

In last week’s column, I hit on much of what is wrong in the Macon area — dismal high school graduation rates, rampant juvenile crime and poverty.

My spirit was lifted as I listened to Lightsey share her story and was reminded about what’s right in our community.

In 1977, Lightsey’s father, Doug Willis, was killed while working at his little grocery store in Tifton when a 15-year-old neighborhood boy attempting to rob the place with another teen shot him in the head.

Who could blame her for the feelings of anger and hatred she admits to having after losing her father.

“My mother died when I was 11 and he was my only family,” she said.

Lightsey said she knew she had to channel her emotions. What she did next makes her one of the most incredible people I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.

“I wanted to know what could make a 15-year-old put a gun to someone’s head and pull the trigger,” she said. Lightsey began volunteering with an anti-racism group called Project Change in Valdosta.

“My research brought me to understand more about racism and how it impacts African-Americans,” she said.

Lightsey said she learned that many black youth who grow up in conditions like Rodderick Haggins, the boy who killed her father, do not believe they’ll live long enough to attain anything in life and if they live long enough, they believe they’ll still amount to nothing because of the color of their skin. “So they think it’s OK to take what they want,” she said.

As for her forgiveness of Haggins, “that’s a gift from God,” she said, “that took away the anger and the hatred.”

Several years ago, she went to the prison in Milledgeville where Haggins was incarcerated to meet him. She took a picture of her father.

“I wanted to see if he had changed,” she said. “It was a powerful meeting. He indeed had changed and I could see that for myself.”

After volunteering with the group in Valdosta for several years, Lightsey heard of an opening at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Macon doing similar work that she was doing for free.

She said she looks at her work not as a job, but as a ministry.

After hearing about the shooting deaths in recent months of some local convenient store clerks in the area, old wounds were reopened for Lightesy.

She said the tragedies also made her more determined to make a difference.

Harold Goodridge is the business editor at The Telegraph. To contact him, call 744-4382 or e-mail him at hgoodridge@macon.com.