Rev. Reggie Longcrier’s Inspirational Story

I was born and raised in Atlantic City, New Jersey. As a child growing up, I had multiple insecurities, and very low self-esteem. My feet were too big for my size. My lips were too thick. I slobbered from my mouth. I didn’t do well in school compared to other kids my age. I was a slow reader as well as a slow learner. I couldn’t play basketball or other sports, as did other kids. Most of my clothes were hand me downs and too big. I wore holes in the soles of my shoes. These issues set the stage for a life of crime, incarceration, and drug addiction. The need to be accepted. The need to fit in.

Before my teen years, I delivered newspapers, sold flower seeds, shined shoes, then graduated to stealing, snatching pocketbooks, breaking in gas stations, and clothing stores. I was able to buy my own school clothes, get my slacks tailored at the tailor shop, which was the style back then, and get soles and heels on my shoes, if I didn’t buy new ones. In fifth and sixth grades, I would go up the alley from my elementary school to the YMCA where other kids would watch and play basketball games, lift weights, play volleyball, and kickball. There were ping pong tables and pool tables that the older boys would play on. I was attracted to the pool tables. Finally, there was something I could play. I got good at it. It gave me self esteem and confidence. My early teens, I was able to go into the pool halls by way of my uncle, who was a tall, light skinned, suit wearing, pool hustler who always kept a pocket full of money.

The pool halls of Atlantic City became my classrooms. This was the place as a kid where I grew up. In the pool hall, I was the kid of whom all the other kids would come to if they needed an older person to buy some weed from, or to go to the pharmacy to buy the cough syrup that we would drink on the weekend, or the barbiturates that we would use. This was the place we would sell our hot goods, or stolen goods, that we had gotten from breaking into some clothing store, and I knew everyone. I was the go between kid. I was the only guy that older guys would trust to go to. I was the man.

I was also the first to try the weed, to sell the weed, before all the other young boys my age. As I got older, I knew all the great hustlers, pool sharks, card sharks, pimps, and junkies. The pool hall stayed open 24 hours around the clock. It wasn’t unusual to spend nights until the wee hours of the morning listening to the stories of the older hustlers and watching great pool hustlers playing games of six ball through the night for large sums of money. I was the one to first sample the weed, smoke the weed, and then sell the weed, which later led to selling heroin, then occasionally sampling my own product. I started off snorting, then skin popping, which is like getting a vaccination in the upper arm, or anywhere else, where the needle could penetrate the skin except in the vein, and then later mainlining. All of this took me on a trip that carried me further than I had wanted to go and kept me longer than I wanted to stay.

After about 25 years of drugs, jails, treatment centers, and prisons, I finally got my marbles back. In other words, I came to my senses. As in the story of the prodigal son, I came to myself. I got out of prison here in North Carolina. I was lucky enough to land a job in retail at Zerden’s men’s store here in Hickory for over five and a half years. I started volunteer work back in the prisons all over North Carolina, visiting and telling my story of redemption and recovery. I then became a prison chaplain at the same prison that I had once served time in. I now became the keeper of the keys to the gate that had once kept me locked in. After more than ten years of ministry, counseling, praying and preaching to inmates of all ages, races, crimes, cultures, and faith groups, the Good Lord gave me a vision for housing for formerly incarcerated persons after having witnessed inmates returning to our communities with no place to go having burned their bridges behind them while the state’s only contribution to a man or woman’s rehabilitation was a gate check for not more that $45, that is if you’ve been incarcerated for more than two years. Less than two years, you get nothing. Once I had witnessed an inmate leave the prison with no place to go once he was released. He went into a department store, picked up a sweater, put it underneath his jacket. Once he knew he was being watched, he walked out of the store thinking he would be immediately arrested for having stole the sweater, but to his surprise, no one came out to arrest him. He walked across the street, picked up a rock, and hurled it through the window of the department store, and just stood and waited for the police to arrest him because he had no where else to go.

I watched numerous people get out of treatment centers, jails, detoxes, and prisons all over the state for years with no place to return or recovery. These, and other stories, became the foundation, the reason, and the vision for Exodus Homes. The vision was clear. I preached it. I talked it, walked it, and lived it day and night. Ministries and jails, prisons, treatment centers, and shelters to the very people that we would, one day, provide housing for.

The first house, we started out serving five people. Then after about a year or so, we were serving up to nine residents. My wife, Audrey, having earned a bachelor’s degree in social work brought her academics to the table, keeping the budget for the house, buying the groceries for the house, paying the utilities and bills, carrying residents to appointments, ministering while working a full-time job at Duke Power in customer service. Rev. Susan Smith, who also held a bachelor’s degree, brought her academics to the table, along with her experience of 20 years of social work, while working full time for the department of social services. She also wrote the grants. Then, there was Sylvia Ratliff with her background as a drill sergeant in the Army and experience of addiction to crack cocaine, brough discipline, order, and regimen to the program. Then there was Joanne Davis, who had a background of addiction at first and later, went on to get her master’s degree in social work, and currently is the executive director of public housing in Chatham County, NC. She helped to facilitate the 12 step meetings on Wednesday nights.

These and countless others helped build the foundation for what is, now Exodus Homes, which currently houses 73 residents, both men and women. The Exodus Works vocational training program helps reintegrate recovering people back into the community through our social enterprises and corporate partners.