Newspapers / Elon University Student Newspaper / Sept. 19, 2012, edition 1 / Page 20
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Features Wednesday, September 19, 2012 • page 20 Elon staff member rebuilds life Katherine Blunt News Editor The congregation is small in size but big in presence, and he stands in the back As the chords of “Amazing Grace” swell, his arms rise above his head and his closed eyes turn upward. On any giv en Sunday, Tommy Purcell, 51, can be found swaying with the music, charged by its power. The hands he holds high are a car penters hands, calloused and weathered, rough like the sandpaper in the toolbox he totes between houses on the Elon University campus as a maintenance di rector. But they are also hands that once tilted beer after beer and raised joint af ter joint to his lips. They are hands that have been wrapped around liquor bottles then steering wheels then jail bars. Tliey are hands that later lay limp by his side in a hospital bed, yellowed and bleeding at the tips. As the h)nnn lyrics fade into the re cesses of the Greater Love World Out reach Center, he sits and buries his face in his hands, clearly lost in retrospection. A roug^ beginning Purcell was 8 years old the first time he got drunk He snuck a liquor bottie under the porch of his home in Tampa, Fla., while his parents were hosting a party. He emerged tipsy and confiised, and his parents laughed. His knee stiU bears a scar from that day. But Purcell didn’t always live with his parents. His biological father and moth er separated when he was a year old, and PHOTO SUBMITTED Purcell and his daughters Kristyne and Lenzie were reunited after he stopped abusing alcohol. Tommy Purcell was reunited with his oider daughter, Kristyne, just before her wedding. Purcell said his abiiity to walk her down the aisle was a work of God. PHOTO SUBMITTED his grandmother became his guardian. When his grandfather got sick he was sent to a foster home until his mother remarried and regained custody By 13, Purcell was malting regular trips from the inner city to the Tampa countryside to drink beer with his friends. He was uprooted, though, right before entering high school His step father got into some legal trouble and moved his family to North Carolina. After a few months, they settled in Bur lington. At Southern Alamance High School, Purcell ran with an older crowd. He continued drinking, started smoking marijuana on a regular basis and began experimenting with hallucinogens and amphetamines. But the most dangerous habit he developed was driving while drunk and he soon found himself in court. The judge told him to enlist in the Air Force, and he did. He was 19. While stationed at Seymour John son Air Force Base in Goldsboro, he met a woman from New York “There were a lot of dmgs around there,” Purcell said. “She went hard like I did.” Not long after she became pregnant, Purcell was honorably discharged for positive urinary analysis, but it “should’ve been dishonorable (discharge),” he said. He married the woman and re mained in the Goldsboro area. His first daughter, Kristyne, was bom in Septem ber 1982, when he was 21. His marriage didn’t last, though. Af ter the divorce, his ex-wife scooped the 2-year-old toddler into her anns and headed to New York leaving Purcell with an empty house. But as two left his life, one came in. His brother, who had also stmggled with dmgs and alcohol came to stay with him in Goldsboro. After about a year, he, too, enlisted in the Air Force and left Purcell by himself “My brother filled the void of my little girl” Purcell said. “After he left, I started drinking more and using dmgs again.” Against all odds Purcell soon moved back to Burling ton, and his drinking habits intensified. His legal record grew longer and more dismal with each DUI and dmg charge, and he grew exceedingly familiar with the Alamance County Jail. On a fateful night in October 1986, Purcell became the object of a high speed car chase. Reckless and intoxi cated, he fled the police and the 13 sub- stance-rekted charges against him. His tmck flipped, engulfing Purcell in a rain of gkss and a haze of smoke. The police screeched to a halt and pulled Purcell out of his overturned vehicle through the shattered windshield. As they dragged him away from the wreckage. the tmck exploded, generating a wave of heat and debris that bowled Purcell and the officers to the ground. They regained their bearings, and Purcell anticipated his arrest. “I had 13 charges against me. Drink ing and driving, running from the kw, possession, all kinds of things,” he said. “But they told me, Tou’re lucky to be alive. Just go home.’” What would have amounted in a felony resulted only in the revocation of his driver’s license. At 25 years old, he had about 15 DUI charges and four DUI convictions to his name. Another woman soon caught his eye. She was only 18, but she, too, liked to drink and get high. The two dated for several years, and Purcell became a fa ther for the second time in 1992. “God put those little girls into my life at times just enough to slow me dovra,” he said. “(Becoming a father) didn’t stop my drinking, but it would
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