Survival skills play out, from Katrina to Santa Rosa

<p>Some of the kids got a little sideways with the law and are wearing ankle bracelets. Many of the kids have relatives who are gangbangers, who deal drugs, who have been to prison, who specialize in nothing else but violence. The kids are on the edge all right, on the edge of uncertainty, where they can vanish or stand resolute.</p><p>“Go talk to Coach Alfred,” Johnny Chavez says to those kids.</p><p>Five years ago Chavez and his wife, Juanita, founded the North Bay Youth Football Conference. Alfred Jones coaches the Junior Pee Wees, the 8- 9- 10-year-old kids, one of five age/weight teams that call themselves the Central City Phantoms.</p><p>The kids trickle back to Chavez, their mouths agape, a look of disbelief in their eyes. They have lost that hard outer shell and are kids again.</p><p>“Coach, is it true what Coach Alfred said?” they ask.</p><p>“It's all true,” Chavez said. “It's all true. Every word.”</p><p>Jones tells the kids about surviving Hurricane Katrina and the kids walk away with heads cocked to the side, mulling over the eternal truth Jones just made so obvious. Lives can change. Down does not mean out. Fires may be all around you but you don't have to burn. The cycle of dysfunction can be broken.</p><p>“Alfred understands what it is like to go through difficult times and the kids can relate to that,” said Mary Bates, CEO of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Santa Rosa. Jones is her athletic director. “Alfred has been there (hit bottom), done that. And now he's come out on the other side of the mountain.”</p><p>This is what it was like for Alfred Jones at the bottom.</p><p>Two weeks after Katrina hit New Orleans on Aug.29, 2005, Jones stood with his wife, Alois, and their four kids in front of his house at 7940 Tuba Street. Half the roof was gone. The walls had bowed inward. The smell of mildew was thick in the air, as Jones remembered. He could see the water line, close to the roof. The front porch was gone.</p><p>“Oh, my God” were the first words out of his mouth, he said. “My thought process was suspended. I couldn't imagine. I went back to New Orleans to my home but no home was there.”</p><p>So Jones just stared and stared, hoping, if by magic somehow, the view would change.</p><p>Shoot, his kids had been born in this house.</p><p>Now Jones was advised to keep an eye on the walls and the half-roof as he walked through the front door. Salvage what you can, the National Guardsmen told him, and then leave. You can't stay here.</p><p>“We were able to salvage one thing from that house,” Jones said. “It was our wedding photo.”</p><p>Devastated? That's just the tip of this emotional iceberg.</p><p>Jones, now 42, had grown up in New Orleans. Sure, his house was in the low-income Ninth Ward and, yes again, hurricanes came before but, he said, “it usually meant we'd be without power for a few days.”</p><p>Now Jones stood in front of 7940 Tuba, his home, and he was holding, Austria, his 3½-month-old daughter.</p><p>“We thought about staying,” Jones said, “but our entire neighborhood was gone. Hospitals were gone. Stores were gone. And I had a baby. What if she needed medical care? Where would I take her? It'd be one thing if the entire neighborhood had banded together to rebuild. But that obviously wasn't going to happen.”</p><p>Jones had a cousin in Antioch and eventually the family ended up Santa Rosa.</p><p>This next part really gets the kids' attention.</p><p>“I was never one to whine about things,” Jones said. “I had to provide for my family. Alois was my rock. I had to take care of her especially.”</p><p>Jones started as a roofer, then a life insurance salesman before being hired two years ago as the athletic director for the Boys and Girls Clubs. Bates was impressed with Jones' ability to be comfortable and to make comfortable the kids who come from sketchy backgrounds and were wary of adults.</p><p>“Alfred is passionate and enthusiastic,” Bates said, “especially with kids working on issues.”</p><p>Jones didn't give up on his youth football players even when they were forced to play in the dark. A couple of months ago, as the days grew shorter, the Central City Phantoms could not practice on the Santa Rosa High School football field. Light bills were overdue. There was no money to pay them. Give up? Don't think so.</p><p>“For about three weeks,” Jones said, “we got the parents to pull alongside the field and turn on their car headlights. We practiced at night in front of those headlights.”</p><p>The midgets from the Central City Phantoms — conference champions — will play this Saturday a team from Antioch at Napa High School. This is a first for a youth team from Santa Rosa. And their practice conditions have improved slightly.</p><p>All the coaches chipped in to rent four lights at the top of 50-foot poles. The light they send out on the Santa Rosa High soccer field is a sliver of a beam, hardly top drawer, but adequate as long as the players run straight down the field.</p><p>“These are our conditions,” Jones said with a dramatic upside.</p><p>“When we would have our games,” Chavez said, “we'd have rival gang members in the bleachers, or people that went to prison. But the thing is, there never were any fights. The parents were there because, no matter what they had done, they wanted to make a better life for the kids.”</p><p>A month from now, when the elections for the North Bay Youth Football Conference take place, Jones will be elected the organization's athletic director. He will take the office with a wish he hopes turns real.</p><p>“I'm going to write the New Orleans Saints,” Jones said of the hottest team in the NFL. “I want to change the Central City Phantoms to the Central City Saints. I would like to use the Saints' colors and emblem. I don't know if it's going to happen but I have to try.”</p><p>Alfred Jones has to try because he never gives himself the other option.</p><p>“We have friends who were married longer than we are,” said Jones of his 22-year old marriage. “They had kids, too, and loved New Orleans. But they got a divorce because they couldn't handle the stress caused by Katrina.”</p><p>Periodically, Jones will test himself as to how he's doing as a father. He will ask his five children — the eldest is 13 — “Do you remember when the water rose in New Orleans?” They shake their heads and, in telling this story, Jones sighs, slumps a bit and exhales a sound of relief.</p><p>“Good,” Jones said.</p><p>Good, that his kids have Santa Rosa as a memory. Good, that his kids have come out the other side of the mountain with their mom and dad. And, better still, the troubled kids in Santa Rosa know that Jones is there, on the other side, waiting for them.</p><p>“Adversity builds character,” Jones said.</p><p>Adversity also builds a reputation.</p><p>For more on North Bay sports go to Bob Padecky's blog at padecky.blogs.pressdemocrat.com. You can reach Staff Columnist Bob Padecky at 521-5223 or bob.padecky@pressdemocrat.com</p>