School Bully Toughs It Out, Makes New Life

The last time I locked eyes with Gary Hathaway, he was trying to pick a fight with me in a grade school art class.

Gary was a small but tough kid who used his fists to act out against an abusive and transient home life.

Now, 30-some years later, Gary and I stood staring at each other again. This time we shook hands.

Our chance reunion came the other day while I was checking out the Browne’s Addition Oxford House, a remarkable, yet littleknown Spokane group home where my 48-year-old classmate is in a real fight.

Like the seven to nine other men who live here, Gary is engaged in a day-to-day war against addictive demons that have robbed him of almost everything.

Part of a national network of 671 homes, Oxford Houses are self-run, self-supported and - here’s the intriguing part - cost taxpayers a fraction of typical live-in programs. There are 55 Oxford Houses in Washington. Spokane has four with another one planned to open in the Lincoln Heights area in a few weeks.

The people who run Oxford Houses say they are different from other group homes because their family atmosphere and system of shared responsibilities offer real hope to desperate cases. Like my old friend.

Once a well-paid manager at a local warehouse store, Gary’s alcoholism spun him out of control until he bottomed out on the streets.

One day Gary chased a handful of pills with some booze and very nearly pulled off a suicide attempt. He woke up hooked to tubes in a hospital bed and was later placed in a psychiatric ward.

Back on the streets, he says he was beaten senseless and robbed in Riverfront Park.

“I was kicked out of every halfway house in town for drinking and fighting,” he says. There was a time “when I resolved in my mind to die.”

Then one night in a bar, a fellow boozer told him about Oxford House. Gary looked it up and applied. Ten months later, he is house president. Gary is clean and sober and believes he has found new purpose to his life.

“This has been the best thing since Coca-Cola,” he says.

The rental houses are always large, well-kept and located in good neighborhoods. Applicants are carefully screened. Everyone living in an Oxford House must pay rent, attend a 12-step recovery program and perform a rotating roster of chores.

Bills are shared. Work is graded daily. There are immediate consequences for unsatisfactory effort.

Unlike most halfway houses or group homes, residents are free to live in an Oxford House as long as they wish. But backslide into drugs or alcohol one time and you’re out the door.

“Nobody’s going to follow you around and baby-sit you,” Gary says. “But I guarantee you, we’re gonna know if you relapse. We all know what the behaviors and attitudes are.”

U.S. Rep. George Nethercutt was so impressed during a visit last month that he fired off a letter to Eastern Washington newspapers. “The eight men in the (Browne’s Addition) house … exemplify courage and self-determination,” wrote the Spokane Republican. “… They are among the best people we have in Eastern Washington.”

Maryland was the site of the first Oxford House, established in 1975 by Paul Malloy, a former congressional staff lawyer. In 1988, Malloy helped bring about federal legislation to create revolving loan funds that help finance houses in every state.

A new Oxford House is formed with a $4,000 seed loan that must be repaid by residents within two years.

The real payoff, however, is in lost souls who become productive members of society.

“This has been the saver of my life,” says Rich Partee, 38, a former resident who is still active with the Oxford House organization. “I look at Oxford House as a gift. A gift to every alcoholic and addict who wants to use it.”

, DataTimes