Eddie Lee Ivery

One of my heroes growing up was Eddie Lee Ivery, running back for the Green Bay Packers in the early 80s. I remember my dad taking my brother and me up to Green Bay for training camp when I was 6 or 7. Eddie and James Lofton were my brother and my favorite players.

I had the opportunity to meet Eddie a few years back when I was working at Cafe 458 in Atlanta. As has been written of elsewhere, Eddie was in the Oakhurst Recovery program, an in-patient drug and alcohol recovery program that was connected with Cafe 458. Eddie was an All-American at Tech, setting what was at that time the single-game rushing mark of 356 yards against Air Force (in a blizzard, no less) and the single-season mark of 1526 yards in 1978. He was drafted in the first round by the Packers, but was injured on the third play of his rookie season. He went on to have multiple knee surgeries, and he was never the player he was in college, though he did lead the Packers in rushing twice.

From small-town, warm weather Georgia, Eddie told me he was pretty depressed when he injured himself. Isolated, he started using drugs and alcohol with teammates. This habit turned into an addiction which lasted through his eight seasons with the Packers, until he finally sought help at the Oakhurst Recovery Program in 1998. That's where I met Eddie. I even talked him into playing on a church-league flag-football team where I was quarterback. I just told my teammates this was Eddie and he'd played a little ball before. I think that first game he had 5 touchdown catches, at 43 years old, not having run in years.

Georgia Trend magazine has a great article about Eddie and his story of getting his life back together. Eddie finished Oakhurst and was put back on scholarship at Tech to finish his bachelors degree. He works as a strength and conditioning coach with the football team at Georgia Tech. Who knows how many lives he has touched already. He certainly touched mine.

Cafe 458

I had the privileged of working at Cafe 458 in Atlanta, GA, for three years. Cafe 458 was founded in 1988 and was the first restaurant of its kind in the United states, and remains the only of its kind in Atlanta. The Cafe, a program of Samaritan House of Atlanta, is a restaurant for homeless men and women, serving lunch every weekday.

The idea behind The Cafe was and is simple: offer a good meal in an atmosphere of dignity, respect, and hope. Rather than a soup kitchen (a much needed institution), which might serve 300 meals to 300 people assembly-line style, the Cafe has always been intimate- 30-40 meals a day- with the emphasis on relationships. The Cafe has changed untold lives of homeless men and women, and those of countless volunteers, like myself. Just people sitting down over lunch, talking, building relationships, building trust--nothing too complex. I've heard homeless people say that we at the Cafe were the only people in their lives who would miss them if they weren't seen that day.

For the past several years, Cafe 458 has served a weekend brunch- and now weekend dinner- to paying customers, with all of the proceeds going back into the Samaritan House program. Their brunches have won numerous awards, and the Cafe recently underwent a makeover courtesy of
Turner Broadcasting's Movie and a Makeover. They've even got a Facebook page!

Go volunteer, it might change your life.