LOCAL Houston | The City Guide JANUARY 2016 | Page 43

FOOD | ARTS | COMMUNITY | STYLE+LEISURE

“Well, I’ll start at the beginning.” Jovon
Tyler speaks eloquently and thoughtfully, pouring
out a heartbreaking and inspiring story of his past
to his present: a violent childhood, teenage homelessness, bouts of depression and drug abuse, followed by a rocky uphill climb to his now steady life
of giving back and bringing joy to those around
him.
Jovon’s mother was only nineteen when she found
herself pregnant, and he never knew his father.
Jovon’s birth mother, he explains, almost aborted
him. According to Jovon, his grandmother was a
tough lady, and his mother wasn’t sure whether she
was going to “get sweet or sour” when she broke
the news. In the end, she got the sweet side, and
Jovon’s grandparents agreed to raise him.
Throughout his childhood, Jovon’s mother fell deeper into drugs and alcohol, and was chronically
homeless. As he grew older, Jovon’s grandmother

beat him regularly, at times with anything she could
get her hands on. At the age of fifteen, Jovon decided that living on the street would be a better situation. He left home and spent his days in a gay
youth centre downtown, sleeping nights on hospital
bathroom floors, on buses or in backyards.
After a year of being homeless, Jovon happened to
meet Annise Parker at the shelter where he was
staying. “She became a friend to me; we connected because of our interest in politics.”
Jovon would later learn that Parker reached out to
his grandmother, asking if she and her partner,
Kathy Hubbard, could raise Jovon. According to
Jovon, his grandmother declined the offer, but their
paths would cross again. Several months later,
Jovon ran into Parker at a local pride parade. They
caught up, and Parker learned Jovon was still
homeless. He recalls, “She said, ‘Enough is
enough,’ and reached in her pocket and handed

me the keys to her house. When I walked into her
house, I felt I had finally met my mother for the first
time. Not to criticize my own mother, because she was
trapped in addiction. And not to criticize my grandmother, because she had her own issues. But I had a
position open for mother and Annise filled it.”
Parker and her partner helped Jovon join Americorps,
and he began working at the YMCA and was certified
as a lifeguard. Jovon worked for Parker in her city council office, but his upward trajectory soon took a downward turn.
In a short period, both Jovon’s grandmother and his birth
mother, with whom he had just begun a friendship,
died, sending Jovon into a deep depression. He
explains, “I began using drugs with the sole goal of
killing myself. I felt I had been robbed.” Jovon ended
up back on the street, challenging God to reveal to him
his purpose for living. “Over the course of those thirty
days, He gradually revealed to me why my life mattered.” Jovon entered a rehab facility in rural Texas and
eventually made his way back to Houston.
“I learned I wanted a life where I could help someone
new every day for the rest of my life.” Inspiringly, he
has. After attempts at other service vocations, Jovon settled on a somewhat unlikely career as operations manager at a funeral home. He earned his GED, went to
mortuary school and got a job at Bradshaw Carter
Funeral Home, where he has worked for seven years.
Jovon is now engaged, and he and his partner are
planning to marry and hope to start a family.

In the spirit of giving back, Jovon undertook a project to help build a school for orphans
in Zambia. On a mission trip to the southern African nation, he remembers asking a group
of orphan boys what they wanted most. He was moved when they all said ‘school’.
“Here I was, I didn’t get a degree, didn’t like school, and who was I to turn my nose up
at education when that’s all these kids want? For five years I made it my mission to have
a school built.” That school, the Tree of Life Children’s School, now serves hundreds of
orphaned children in Lusaka, Zambia. “Who would have t