Dr. Mozell Haymon Memorial Scholarship Fund

"God Can Write Straight With A Crooked Line" This scholarship was created to continue the work and legacy of Dr. Mozell Haymon, addiction specialist, activist, and trailblazer in the addiction and recovery space. Above all else, Dr. Haymon stressed the importance of education and advocated tirelessly for increased access to secondary education for veterans returning home from war and for those in recovery, understanding that the cost of education should never be the obstacle that stands between a person and the life they are working to build. My father was a provider and a protector, a man who showed up every single day, simply because that is who he was. Born and raised in Gary, Indiana, his hometown shaped him in ways only a hometown can. He graduated from Tolleston High School, served his country in Vietnam, and came home, where he battled alcoholism.  He was always an advocate of telling the truth. When he told his story, he would tell how it began, what happened, and what it is like now. His honesty about his own darkness was the most powerful light he could offer someone else. He could walk a room through Recovery Dynamics and the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous with extraordinary precision. Dr. Haymon taught the disease concept of alcoholism at a time when the world still defined it as a character flaw. He stood in those rooms, as a veteran, as a man who had been to the bottom and returned to tell the truth about himself so that others could find the courage to do the same. He closed every meeting the same way: "It works if you work it...sober." In April 1978, Dr. Haymon opened the doors of Serenity Club and stepped into his calling. What he built over the next 46 years, with nothing more than $1,000 and a promise to God, became Serenity House of Gary, a nine-acre residential recovery campus that changed thousands of lives in the community he loved unconditionally. My father was a Deacon, a Pastor, and a Bishop. He was a powerful voice from the pulpit and a man whose faith shaped every room he walked into. But the people who knew him best knew that something extraordinary happened when Mozell Haymon pulled up a chair at an AA meeting. The pulpit gave him a platform. The tables of AA gave him a purpose. In his final years, Dr. Haymon developed dementia and could no longer lead what he had built with his hands and his faith. This scholarship fund exists to ensure that what he truly stood for — second chances, education, sobriety, and an unshakeable love for the people of Gary, Indiana is never lost.