Getting involved with Lubbock volunteering at the Guadalupe-Parkway Sommerville Centers changed Jazz’s life. Growing up he was surrounded by poor examples and bad influences, but the care and investment from those at the Center were instrumental in showing Jazz what means to be a man and to have a positive impact on not just his own life, but on those around him as well. In this story about Lubbock volunteering we tell about the deep impact this local organization has had on our community, Jazz being just one example of many impacted lives.
My name is Jazzmond Williams. I go by Jazz. J-A-Z-Z-M-O-N-D W-I-L-L-I-A-M-S. I have three beautiful children, two boys and a girl. I coached my son's seventh grade basketball team and I coached my middle son football team, the Longhorns.
My job at the center is I'm the CYD sports coordinator. It's community youth development, and they're targets 79415 zip code. And it's just like a sports program just coordinating sports. And I like to say I pretty much do everything.
I say this, you know, whatever needs to be done. And the reason I love working at the Guadalupe Parkway neighborhood centers is because I was just like the kids that go there right now. I know exactly what they're going through.
How effective the Senate can be because I was one of those kids. I love them. Just like I love my own kids. I'll give them the shirt off my back. I'll give them anything they need outside of this just because I know someone, me, as I just know.
My purpose is just to give back to those kids a little bit about my care. Mom was on drugs. Dad really worked in my life. Grandma and grandpa raised me the best that they could. Growing up in East, it was kind of tough.
We had a lot of gangs and a lot of drugs and stuff being sold in our neighborhood. But coming to the stadium was like an alley for kids, for them to just go play basketball and go play football or just be around positive people, just being able to go on different fields, trips, stuff that I probably would have got to do living with my grandparents because they were just so oh, when they didn't want to do it, it was just they couldn't move around and stuff like. Younger people could be, but I wouldn't say anything.
And I think growing up in East taught me how to be a man. It made me grow up, taught me how to be tough. Coming into the theater, I didn't have anything. I didn't have a car bank accounts license.
I didn't have any day. And I want the kids to look up to me. And I was wondering, like, how can kids look up to me where I don't have anything? So I just try to just give them love and show them that I'm passionate about working in my job.
He came to the centers without a driver's license. He came to the centers without a Social Security card, a birth certificate. I just needed something to identify him, and he had nothing. I took him downtown to take care of some business, and he had to pay a fine.
And I said, Jazz, can't you call someone to loan you $50 like anybody? He just broke down and he said, I don't have anybody. I don't have a mom that can help me, I don't have a dad that can help me.
I don't have anyone that can help me. I said nobody and he just broke down, he said. It's hard to believe, but I don't have anybody. I said, OK, I'm going to be your mom and I'm going to be your dad, and I'm going to loan you this money so you can pay this, this fine you have. And I'm going to hold you accountable. And I knew that all he needed was a chance because he'd already been taught to through the centers that he had value. He just needed someone to help him while he was having a hard time.
And so I invested in jazz. $50. And I said, You're going to have to pay me back. He said, I will. And I think about the strength that it took to say, I don't have anyone to be honest and to be very transparent and to follow through.
And I think he learned that coming to the sinners that he was held accountable and that he was going to have to follow through if it weren't for us in Arizona where I would be, I wouldn't be sitting right here giving this interview.
Where I grew up, it is easy to get in trouble. It is so easy to get in trouble.
I wouldn't be selling drugs. I would have been trying to make a quick buck instead of coming here to see it and see a positive to see God. As he takes us to go to see Sam plays college, see and people do of positive.
But also, living the life there, I see some of the drug dealers live in driving nice cars, you could drive a nice car and go to school. You could drive a nice car and have a GI. So I just seen a different life by going to the senior minister, did you see the things that were going on in my neighborhood? So if I would've had to say today, I know I would be right here right now. It was a safe place for us to go.
In great people, they just worked at the senior and edges made me want to just grow up and be nice like those people because it's not a lot of nice people out there. So I knew going into the theater, I always knew someone was going to ask me, how was I doing or have I or what can I do for you? And which is to go to high school and graduated there?
I went to eastern New Mexico on a Fulbright scholarship to. I feel like I probably wouldn't know went to college. If I have it, if I didn't tour different cottages, go into the center as far as taxes take, our played Wayland Baptist, me seeing those schools and just seeing the girls at the school kind of made me want to go to college. And I feel like if I didn't get that opportunity, I go in with the sailors. I wouldn't have even wanted to go to college, even though I knew I knew how to play football real well.
I see college in my future into. I went on the tour with the city at Texas Tech and it just made me want to go to school. Like I said, I wouldn't change it for the world. I think Eastern may be a better man.
So but I feel like I wouldn't go to college if I didn't go visit those schools when I acted as soon as.