When his mother became terminally ill, Isaiah Wagoner and his parents moved to Little Rock to be closer to her grandmother. However, because the house was too small for so many people, Isaiah and his father were kicked out and found themselves unhoused.
In 1994, when Isaiah was four years old, he and his father checked into Our House with the help of Don, then the Operations Director. Back then, Our House looked different. While Our House was still by the old VA Hospital, instead of one shelter building and one family transition house, there were multiple one-bedroom duplexes. His father quickly found work on campus as a security guard.
Isaiah’s fondest memories surround the Children’s Program. There were many children with which to play, and he never felt ostracized or poor or different from the other kids. Isaiah loved learning to cook with volunteers in the kitchen. He also found connection with his teachers at Our House- before he left with his father, a teacher presented him with a Batman mask that was Isaiah’s prized possession for many years.
When Isaiah’s mother passed away in 1996, his father moved them back to Eugene, OR (his hometown) on a greyhound bus, where Isaiah has become a community leader. In addition to his job at the YMCA working with youth, Wagoner is a civil rights advocate who has led BLM and ACLU protests in his home city. In fall 2020, he ran a write-in campaign for mayor of Eugene. The Eugene Democratic Party is eyeing him to run again in 2024. Isaiah is on-track to turn his two-year degree into a four-year degree and hopes to one day own his own business in the financial field.
When asked how he found Our House again after all these years, he said he was on a path of reflection at the time. He was thinking about the self-reliance that being a kid at Our House and son of a single dad taught him. Isaiah wanted to check in to see how Our House was doing. Has it grown? Did it close? When he found us on Facebook, he decided to like the page and stay connected. A few months later, he found Workshop Wednesdays and left a comment. We have enjoyed getting to know a client from so early on in our history, and we are thrilled he has decided to reach out!
