EPISODE 14
"JUST
WORDS"

Welcome to Just Words—the stories of working people in our community

I met Taveon Nash, better known as Bill, when I visited B Spirit, the youth center in Park Heights that Nargas Hyman runs out of her grandmother’s basement. He’s a youth mentor there, and he started there as an adolescent—and more than that. He’s a good father…a trade school graduate…an example of how the youth in Park Heights can succeed if someone encourages them. But he also shows us that we live in a society where even someone who works hard can have trouble holding it all together.

I am thinking about trying to find something else where I don’t have to work two jobs, but right now it is kind of hard.

During the week, Bill Nash works as a medical assistant at a doctor’s office. On the weekends, he serves on the wait staff at a nursing home.

I don’t even have time to even get off work to go get checked out, go to the doctors. Sometimes I go to work; I wake up in the morning and have headaches-Migraines! I’ve never experienced that before-but I just get up and try to go on in there. Hopefully I can find something else—just one job that will pay everything, so I don’t have to work, can enjoy days off.

Bill makes an honest living now, working 7 days a week, but his work wasn’t always so legit. At one point he sold drugs on the street.

I tried it, but I did it to help out my family. My mother wasn’t working, , so someone had to step out, take care of the house. I had to do something; I wasn’t going to get put out on the street. So I started doing what I had to do to pay the bills. Then I had a baby on the way, so that is what made me give it up, go back to school, do a positive thing. And once I finished school and found a job, I left it alone. And then when my son was born, that made me really not want to, you know. Me having a son and going back to school changed my whole life. I want to be there for my son! My father, he worked. He had his own catering business. Some days I might wouldn’t see him. It was hard, not having a male in my life. I had a male there, but he wasn’t as much as I wanted him. I had cousins and stuff, their fathers went out with them, played baseball with them, came to their games. When I played baseball, basketball, football, stuff like that, I looked in the stands. I didn’t see nobody there. So it was kind of hard for me, so I wanted to be there for my son. When he gets older I want to be there, give him the support that a father should. Not always working. And right now I feel as though I am not doing that. I am working too much, and I am not there for him. But I try and be there the best way I can. Trying to do that now. That’s why I said, am working on right now to buy a car so after work, I can commute to get to him, and give his mother a break, his grandmother a break, and let him come with me. They live in Owings Mills and I live in the city, so I can’t get out as much as I want to get to him, to sit there and do these things, teach him these things, potty train him. I’ve been trying to teach him to share. That’s his thing, he don’t really want to share. He’s an only child and he is home so he has all this stuff to himself, so when he get out in daycare and see another kid play with a toy he want to go take it from him, and I am trying to teach him that this is not the right way. I am trying to get him to give it out and say, share. Maybe if I had more time with him during the week, we could work on that.

Bill Nash is inspiring, a survivor…but his life makes me think about how we pay people providing essential services like medical assistance…and what it says about how we, as a society, value their lives.

Just words is a production of the Center for Emerging Media, produced by Jessica Phillips, through a grant from OSI-Baltimore: investing in solutions to Baltimore’s toughest problems, with audacious thinking for lasting change, on the web at OSI-Baltimore.org.
Visit JUST WORDS on the web at centerforemergingmedia.org, or
email us, at justwords@wypr.org

I’m Marc Steiner, thanks for listening, to "Just Words".

Music: “strong week” by Jones www.jonesrecordings.com