New garden brings lots of people to ATCC office

Apr. 1—Anytime something happens in a positive way at the Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit Adult Treatment Court Collaborative (ATCC) in Milledgeville, it's celebrated as another milestone by those involved in the program.

Earlier this year, participants of the program took part in celebrating the planting of a new vegetable garden in the backyard of the office on Heritage Road.

Talk about celebrating. That's exactly what happened.

Beverly Jones, one of the case workers for the ATCC program, said she wanted it to be a big celebration because it would help to bring the participants together.

"It's just another way of uniting them and encouraging them to be the best they can be at all times," Jones said at the time of the celebration back in late February. "I think it worked out really, really nice."

Jones also was the one who told the women involved in the current ATCC class that she wanted them to wear festive looking hats to the new garden celebration and dinner that followed.

Several men and women who have involvement in the criminal justice system in Baldwin County make up the current ATCC class. The mission of the Adult Treatment Court Collaborative program is to serve the local community by addressing the problems of individuals who have substance abuse, mental health or co-occurring disorders and have involvement in the criminal justice system.

The program is an alternative to incarceration. It provides a unique opportunity for participants to turn their lives around.

The program, which is now several years old, has allowed many graduates to go on and lead lives many of them never thought possible.

During the garden celebration, The Union-Recorder talked with four of the participants who worked together to make the garden a reality. They included Dennis White of Gray; Donald Dotson of Milledgeville; Kenneth Williams of Baldwin County; and David Ward of Milledgeville.

All four of them have had their share of run-ins with law enforcement officers through the years. They've all seen the inside of a jail cell many times. The program offers them a fresh start at life, one filled with aspirations and dreams like other people who are not dependent on alcohol and drugs.

"I've spent the past six months making amends to those I've hurt and disappointed, and I've still got a ways to go for all the things I did wrong," Williams said. "All any of us can do is to say I'm sorry to those we have wronged and try to go on."

The most difficult thing Dotson said he had to do was to accept what he had done personally.

"All I can do is tell those I hurt that I apologize and try to go on with my life," Dotson said. "That's really all that I can do."

White, meanwhile, has gone above and beyond seeking forgiveness from others for how he's treated them.

"I have even reached out to those who are dead and written them letters to express how bad I treated them, and then I take the letters and burn them up," White said.

The burning of the letters takes place like a ritual, he said.

"I have a little cross out there in the yard and then start a fire and burn the letters," White said.

He said it was his way of honoring those he had wrong and departed this world before he could apologize to them personally and seek their forgiveness.

"You might think there's some people in your life that you haven't hurt that badly, but it could have been the way you talked badly to them," White said. "You don't think it be wrong at the time, but it be wrong."

That's part of the reason why the four men decided to come together to till a section of dirt in the rear of the ATCC yard and build a vegetable garden.

"We wanted to share the vegetables with each other," Dotson said.

He said when he first got involved in the program that they broke him down.

"They taught me that I couldn't be what I wanted to be," Dotson said, noting he wanted to continue to do things that were illegal like buying and using cocaine.

"I came to realize that they ain't doing anything except trying to help me," Dotson said. "And now I've turned my heart life completely around."

For 20 years, he had no driver's license. He now has one.

The fourth man involved in the garden idea is Ward, now 66, who at one time was a serial bank robber.

"I've been in and out of city and county jails and in state and federal prisons so many times, I can't even count them," Ward said. "Thirty-six years of my life has been spent in prisons."

Ward has nothing but the highest of respect for Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit Superior Court Judge Alison T. Burleson.

"No one has ever stepped up to help in my life like Judge Burleson," said Ward, who is set to graduate from the ATCC program in a couple of years. "She is the only person who has ever really shown me what true love is all about."

Burleson said she was most impressed with the new garden.

"They've done a wonderful job," Burleson said, "I can't wait to see it when everything begins growing and they start picking things from it."

Brandi LaMere of Milledgeville is one of the women who came dressed up and in a special hat. LaMere said she was placed into the ATCC program by Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit Chief Judge Brenda H. Trammell. Jones is her case manager.

"I've always had a drug problem, LaMere said. "I've gone through a lot of emotional trauma in my life, and drugs help ease my pain."

She used such illegal drugs as heroin and methamphetamine.

"I have been clean from the use of drugs just shy of three years," LaMere said. "And I feel great."

She said she no longer hangs with the people she once called friends.

In the past when she was a user, LaMere said as soon as she was bonded out from jail, she would go right back to do what she knew she wasn't suppose to do.

"This program has been a lifesaving program for me," LaMere said.

She said in her former life, nothing was getting fixed and she found herself in and out of jail as well as prison on two different occasions. Her life has now taken on a new direction. She is now attending online college courses in the health field and aspires to become a college graduate in the near future.

Another big thing that LaMere said she gained as a result of the ATCC program was her self-esteem.

"That really makes me feel great," she said.

She later joined several of her friends in the program as they ate lasagna to celebrate the new garden.