DALTON ? Imagine being an 11-year-old girl who?s been shuffled from caretaker to caretaker for most of her life, never having a permanent place to call home.
Imagine being sent one day in 2001 to Cherokee Estate Youth Home in Dalton, where you probably think you?re just in for more of the same disappointment from adults.
Now fast forward to 2012.
Imagine that same girl, now 22 years old, just a couple of months away from earning an early childhood education degree from Dalton State College, having spent the second half of her life in the loving and nurturing environment of the youth home.
?Cherokee Estate absolutely turned my life around,? says Angel Claxton, who?s doing her student teaching at Dawnville Elementary School and hopes to find a job as a second-grade teacher this fall. She still lives on campus in the Transitional Living Cottage and can stay there as long as she is getting an education.
Angel is just one of the many success stories during the past 55 years at the five youth homes scattered across the state, according to Cherokee Estate Director Nikita Jordan.
?Success is hard to measure when you?re dealing with these kids,? Jordan says. ?We measure it one child at a time. Sometimes it might just be graduating from high school because she?s the first person in her family to do that. We had our first young lady to make homecoming court so that was a big thing for us and for her because it was something she didn?t think she could do. We?ve had a young man graduate from The Citadel, and we?ve sent a young man through medical school who?s currently a doctor.?
These children and others might have fallen through the cracks if a group of Whitfield County residents had not decided in the 1950s to start a special place for youngsters living amidst bad family situations. That home eventually merged with the Georgia Sheriffs Youth Homes, and today more than 150 boys and girls are served on five campuses across the state, including the most recent home, Mountain View, that opened for boys in Murray County in 2006.
The homes strive to provide a secure future for Georgia?s needy and worthy children and to give them love, guidance, discipline, and all the advantages that are every American child?s birthright. The homes are a warm, caring, and secure place for a child to live ? not reform schools or correctional institutions.
That?s one major misconception that everyone connected with Cherokee Estate wants to clear up.
?People automatically think that because it says ?Georgia Sheriffs? that these are bad children,? Jordan says. ?But they?re not.?
A point emphasized by Angel: ?My passion is to be sure that people don?t think that our kids and I at any point are bad children or have done anything to cause this themselves.?
As a video promoting the youth homes says, ?children sometimes need to be removed from their homes, their families. Long after their world has fallen apart, they?re left to put together the pieces of their broken lives. Through no fault of their own, these children find themselves in the court system waiting to find out where they will go. Many are assigned to group homes.?
One such youngster came from Whitfield County.
Gifts of love
?I was taken from my family when I was 12 years old,? Joshua Mathew Ridley says in the video. ?My parents, they were into drugs and so were my older brothers, so that was the cause for me being removed. You know, you see movies and TV shows where cops are busting in on a house where drug use is prevalent? My house was that house. Mine was known as the crack house. I was locked out of my room more than four nights a week because of people shooting up, smoking whatever drug of their choice. And I slept on the couch.?
One day, he discovered his mom and stepdad melting drugs on a spoon in the bathroom of their home, ?and I got real angry and confused a little bit,? he said. ?My mom would just disappear for three or four days at a time, and then one weekend she left and didn?t come back.?
Ridley wound up at the Boys Ranch in Hahira, where the nurturing lifted him out of the abyss in which he was living.
?I?m 24 years old, just graduated from Georgia Southwestern State University, and I?m a teacher in Monroe County,? he explains in the video. ?(Boys Ranch) took an interest in me, in my life, and they said, you know what, he can make it so we?re gonna take care of his college, we?re gonna see that he has the needs in his life to be able to be successful. That just spoke volumes to me, knowing that they were able to do that. But it wasn?t just as an investment, it was as a gift of love. It was because they loved me.?
That unconditional love permeates the atmosphere at Cherokee Estate, too, where Jordan has worked for the past 17 years, including the past five as director. ?I?ve done just about every job here,? she says with a smile.
?Cherokee Estate has become very close to my heart,? she says. ?It didn?t start out that way.?
With her marketing degree firmly in hand, Jordan thought Cherokee Estate would just be ?an adventure? on her way to the big city of Atlanta, but a funny thing happened after she got to Dalton.
?I really became interested in what this organization was doing for kids and how it really helps kids and the opportunity it provides for children, especially college education, those kinds of things that most of them don?t have the opportunity to get in the situations they were in. Probably most of our kids that have been here are the first to graduate high school in their family. We try to get them back in school, get them interested in school, make education important to them so they can be successful because school has not been important in a lot of their families.?
Angel credits Cherokee Estate for her success in college.
In fact, it was a summer work program through the youth home that sparked her interest in pursuing a career as a teacher.
?The summer that I turned 14, I worked in a day care,? she said. ?It was absolutely the most exhausting but fun job I have ever had in my entire life. I realized at that point that is really what I like to do. My heart is with children.?
She pointed out the emphasis on education at Cherokee Estate, not only through regular tutoring sessions but also through ordinary life skills taken for granted by some. ?I?ve learned and grown from the lessons that Miss Nikita teaches me,? Angel said. ?Just simple things, like don?t wear flipflops if you?re not going to paint your toenails. That is not that big of a deal for most people, but as a young girl you need someone in your life to teach you those lessons and to tell you those things.?
Jordan stepped into that role years ago, and today she and Angel continue to have a close relationship.
?Miss Nikita?s been such a big part of my life,? Angel said. ?I mean, when she?s at your high school graduation, when she dresses you for prom ? it?s almost a relationship I can?t explain. Then one day, I realized God sent her to be my mother. This is how God intended for it to be.?
Jordan has used that nurturing philosophy to run Cherokee Estate. ?I just want to see productive adults,? she said. ?I don?t ever want to pick up the paper and see any of our kids in the paper for bad things. I just want them to grow up and raise their families better than they were raised before coming here. We?re just trying to instill some of these values in them ? education, being a young lady, being a young man, respecting authority, pretty much the same values any parent wants for their children.?
The house parents
The girls actually live under the supervision of house parents Nathan and Linda Roberts, currently the only full-time house parents on campus but soon to be joined by James and Rita Roland after they complete training. They are given time off by several relief house parents, including Claxton, Kayaundra Broome, Denae King and Sandy Reese.
?House parents have to have 24 hours of training required by the state,? Jordan said, ?and then we do a lot of pre-training before they start. We want to make sure that they can meet the needs and serve the children and not just be baby-sitters. That?s not what we do; that?s not what we?re here for. We want to make sure that the kids get the help that they need.?
Other key employees include office manager Glenda Fisher (who has worked at Cherokee Estate for 30 years), property manager/maintenance man and former house parent Jerry Brown (a 20-year veteran), and social service coordinators Tiffany Hammontree and Sara Hammontree.
The staff strives to make the experience as ?home-like? as possible. ?We try to be as typical and normal as any other family ? dating , driving, movies, bowling, summer vacation,? Jordan said. ?You name it, we try to do what you try to do for your family.?
Vacation can prove to be an interesting time for the kids and staff, to say the least, since the girls of Cherokee Estate and the boys of Mountain View go at the same time.
?I tell people the preparation is the worst day of my life,? Jordan says with a laugh, ?trying to make sure we can accommodate everybody, that there are places we can eat in close proximity that are reasonable, and trying to find something that?s fun for everybody. We have been to Universal Studios three times, we?ve been to Dollywood in Pigeon Forge either two or three times, and we?ve gone to the beach about three times because some of the kids had never seen the beach. Those were some of the really fun times because one little girl went diving into the ocean like it was a swimming pool. She came up and was like, ?Who put salt in the water!? She had no clue, and then one of the staff said, ?Well, God put salt in the water.? And she said, ?Who told him that was a good idea? Didn?t he know we wanted to swim?? She had no clue it was different from a swimming pool. She just thought it was a much larger version.?
Having a place to call home and nurturing house parents is of immeasurable value to youngsters like Angel Claxton and the hundreds who have lived at Cherokee Estate.
?There are not adequate words to describe how much Youth Homes has done for me and my siblings and has continued to do for me,? Angel said. ?It?s been a journey, but it?s one that I wouldn?t give up for anything, and I would do it all over again if I had to.?
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Quick Facts
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? Cherokee Estate Youth Home is located at 850 Cherokee Estate Road N.E., off Cleveland Highway, and has four cottages that house up to 38 children (from ages 6 to as long as they remain in school) and one transitional living cottage for young adults that houses up to four. Currently, 12 girls call Cherokee Estate home and live under the supervision of houseparents Nathan and Linda Roberts.
? Children usually come to Cherokee Estate after being taken into the custody of the state because of neglect or abuse by their parents. They can also be referred by their guardians.
? The Georgia Sheriffs Association pays all the big bills, like salaries, maintenance, food, and vehicles. A local board of trustees, composed of about 20 people and currently chaired by Marv Lewis, acts like grandparents and raises money to give the girls the extras, like trips, class rings and yearbooks or to buy things for the cottages, like carpeting, new pots and pans or computers.
? Can anyone help? Yes. If you?d like to volunteer to teach the children crafts or other fun activities, call Director Nikita Jordan at 706-259-8581. You can also make tax-deductible donations by sending a check to Cherokee Estate, 850 Cherokee Estate Road, Dalton, GA 30721.
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