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Jack Curtis

Jack Curtis has lived a life that, if it were not for one unselfish man, would have turned out very differently. So, his life's story is also the story of his foster father and mentor, Henry Lemert. I sat down with Jack recently at his home and he told me about his life. (You can also listen to Jack's recorded testimony at the bottom of this page.)
 

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bw:  What was your childhood like, Jack?

jack:  Well, I was raised as a child in foster care actually. My mother took off, left us, never returned home, and we were scooped up by the State and institutionalized. We eventually made our way into the foster care system, and then were bounced in and out of several homes.

bw:  This was at a pretty young age?

jack:  Yeah, I was probably in foster care from the time I was five until probably nine.

bw:  Any brothers or sisters?

jack:  One brother and one sister. My extended family includes two half-sisters, one step-brother, and several half-brothers and half-sisters on my biological father's side.

bw:  Were you and your brother and sister able to stay together most of the time?

jack:  Yeah, the first few homes we were together, and then it was hard to find takers for three kids. They ended up breaking us up, and the two of them stayed together and I went off in another foster home by myself.

bw:  You said it was a variety of different homes. Did you settle finally at one place where you did most of your growing up?

jack:  Yeah, the first couple foster homes I was in were disaster situations. There was some abuse involved. I was pretty much the target of an older kid. Eventually, though, I landed at the doorstep of Henry Lemert and his family. They were a Christian family and their missions work was taking a kid like me that was thrown away like trash. They brought me into their home, cared for me, trained me, loved me.

bw:  Did they have other children also?

jack:  They had two children of their own, and I think they had seven or eight foster kids over time. There was another foster boy there when I was there and after I left they had several others.

bw:  So, at one time they might have had how many?

jack:  I think they never had more than two at once, but over a period of time I think they took seven or eight kids in because, when I spoke at Henry's funeral many years later, several of them showed up there.

bw:  So, how long were you with the Lemerts?

jack:  Well, what eventually happened was, my birth mother ended up moving from Indiana to Las Vegas. She got remarried and eventually got her life back on the rails, went back to the court system, and was able to regain custody of me and my brother and sister. (I also have a step-sister from my mom's second marriage; she went to live with her father.) We were shipped to Las Vegas where we took up residence with our biological mother and our new stepfather.

bw:  How old were you then?

jack:  I was about nine or ten.

bw:  From then on things went well?

jack:  Things went well for a while. When I was 15, my mother left my stepfather and broke our home up again. As it turned out, my mother ended up living with and marrying a very young guy. In fact, he was a boyfriend of my older sister. I stayed with my mom for a while but left home at age 15 and didn't return. I was on my own after that.

bw:  Did you stay in Vegas?

jack:  Yeah.

bw:  What did you do?

jack:  Well, Vegas, you know, is a unique place, and at that point in time you could definitely find work. I worked as a busboy full time. A friend of mine who was kicked out of his house, my sister, and I got an apartment. I worked full time and went to school, and lived in this old apartment. Eventually, school dropped way down on my totem pole of priorities, and I dropped out of school in the 11th grade. I worked as a busboy and as a waiter. At age 18, I became a bellman in a hotel and began to work my way up. When I turned 21, I became a craps dealer in a casino. In the meanwhile, I was becoming very street-wise, getting involved in all kinds of crazy things. I was involved in prostitution and I began dealing drugs at a young age, becoming a drug runner and mule. I ran drugs all over the United States.

bw:  Was this on your own or working for someone else?

jack:  Sometimes I was on my own, but primarily I was involved in a Cuban mafia-type organization. All the people I ran with were doing all kinds of underhanded activity.

bw:  Was it dangerous?

jack:  Yeah, it was dangerous. A lot of us packed guns and were involved in big drug deals where things could go wrong. A couple of my friends were shot and killed

bw:  Friends who were your age?

jack:  Yeah, and older. We worked straight jobs, and then we did all this on the side and tried to keep a low profile. I had drug abuse issues and alcohol abuse issues...all those things.

bw:  Safe to say that, during this time, Christ wasn't really a part of your life?

jack:  No. Not at all.

bw:  Did your mom know about Him?

jack:  No, my mom was a Catholic but, you know, it was a one-hour-a-week thing.

bw:  What was it that got you to consider Christ?

jack:  My foster parents, the Lemerts, had definitely planted some seeds in me that were always there. They introduced me to Christ at a young age. In fact, my testimony is entitled The Legacy Of Henry Lemert because of the impact he had on me. As I look back now, I see that God always kept telling me, "Jack, you know, this stuff ain't right." In my mind, God kept taking me back to the Lemerts. God really gave me a lot of talent, you know, I was a pretty sharp young fella, with a good business sense, great with numbers, creative, you know, and I was just using all that talent and energy that God had given me toward not so good things. And the Lemerts...they just kept pursuing me, they kept pursuing relations with me. These were people that were simple farm people, they financially didn't have much materially, but my whole life they just kept staying in touch with me, kept calling me.

bw:  They just knew how to love?

jack:  Yeah, they just loved me. And as I became a young adult and got involved in all of this garbage, all of this stuff, there were a couple things that were driving it for sure. One was that, I felt like I wanted to be somebody, and to be somebody, in my mind, you had to have money and prestige and power, you know. So, I was chasing that while I was working and doing all this side stuff, and at a young age, I was investing money and wheeling deals and buying land, and bought my first home before I was even 21 years old. I had race cars and race boats and had all the trappings of success.

bw:  Mostly from drug money, illegal operations?

jack:  Yep. I really had everything, I thought, figured out. I knew the system, I knew how everything worked, I knew how to get around things, but the one thing that would always short-circuit me every time I thought about it was, why did Henry Lemert and his family do what they did for me? That's the one thing that, every time I thought about it, hit me like a volt of electricity. It shook me to my core. And later, it's what Christ used to draw me to Himself. When I met Henry, I met a man of real love and real integrity, and I never could escape that, and it haunted me to the place where it took me to my knees.

bw:  How many years were you living that street kind of life and how did the move toward Christ come about?

jack:  Well, after this time of finding my own way, I owned two companies, I had land investments, the world looked at me, all my friends looked at me and thought, man, Jack's got it all going on. I've got investments, I've got a home, I've got beautiful cars and boats and motorcycles and women, and all.

But inside me, there was this rage, this emptiness. There was a lot of bitterness, there was a lot of anger, you know, and it was just a lot of emptiness.

Eventually, one night I was closing my restaurant, and I went out back, and I just looked up into the sky. I was all by myself, I had my dog with me, and I just cried out for God, I said, "God, if you're really real, if you're really true, I need to know. I need to know the truth." I can remember saying it like it's today. And I said it with the most sincere and most genuine heart that a human could put forth. And I think when a heart gets to that place, that's when God's ready to move in, and that's exactly what happened. I mean, things started happening, people started coming across my path, and it was just...it was too much to be coincidental, and God started really reaching out to me through people.

There was a little Bible-teaching church, much like the building that Harvest Fellowship is in, with a guy who was committed to teaching God's word. It was in the inner city of Las Vegas, which is where my two little businesses were, kind of in the ghetto area. He would come in and eat at my restaurant. He was the pastor of this little Bible teaching church and struck up a relationship with me. I visited his church one time, and the first time I visited it, I just knew, and he gave such a clear presentation of the gospel, I just knew what he was saying was true, and gave my life to Christ. And probably every time the door to that church was open, I was there, and he befriended me and actually, as we became friends and I started opening up my life and sharing the deepest cracks and crevices of what was going on in my heart and what my background was, he mentored me in God's word personally, for a couple years.

bw:  How old were you then?

jack:  I was 25.

bw:  And how old was he?

jack:  He was in his mid 30s. Shortly after that, I began sharing this direction in my life with Jill. We were newly married by this time, and she had come from an atheist background—her father was a professing atheist. She was brought up with no religion; almost an anti-religion background. I told her that I wasn't going to pressure her or preach to her, but this is what I believe I was called to do. She was curious and started coming to church with me and about a month later she gave her life to Christ.

bw:  How did it happen that you ended up in Indiana?

jack:  Jill and I started our family and had a couple young children, and all my biological family was in Vegas and very dysfunctional. My mom's been married six times and my father was in prison for many, many years and the dysfunction in my family was just so deep. I felt strongly that God wanted me to get out. I thought that my family was going to have a strong negative influence on my children, which I was adamant was not going to happen. Also, the Lemerts were still back here in La Paz, Indiana, and they were getting up there in age and I had really rekindled that relationship with them after I became a Christian. We stayed in close contact; they came out to see me and spend time with me and I thought my kids needed to rub up on these people.

I came home one day (I'd been praying about moving) and I said, "I feel strongly we need to get out of Vegas, Jill." She said, "What do you mean?" I answered, "I know I don't have a job and I don't know what we're going to do. I just feel like we've got to get out for our kid's sake, and I want to get back close to the Lemerts." So we put the house on the market. It sold in eight days.

bw:  Eight days!

 

jack:  Yeah, and off we went. After I became a Christian, I still had these two companies, and they were pretty successful. I sold them off, made my first chunk of ligitiment money. I sold all my personal belongings, all my investments, and we liquidated everything and bought a 40-foot fifth-wheel, a Chevy one-ton, took our two little babies and hit the road.

All we knew is that we were going to be somewhere close to the Lemerts. With no job, nothing. That's how we made our way here. We were on the road for five months. I thought, once we arrived in Indiana, maybe I would go to seminary. I went and visited a bunch of Bible schools, but realized that, because I didn't even have a high school education, for me to get seminary training was going to be a long, drawn-out process. I didn't really feel like that was the door that God was opening, and so, when I arrived here in 1992, I became Vice President and General Manager of Raynor Door Authority (www.raynorftwayne.com).

 

bw:  And you continued your relationship with the Lemerts?

bw:  Yes, and they actually became like grandparents to my children.

bw:  Are they still living?

jack:  No, they both died quite a few years ago. They have a daughter, Carol Bachlin, who lives in Culver, Indiana, and she and I are just like brother and sister; we're the best of friends. She's become like an aunt to my kids, and we spend a lot of time together. She's just a wonderful, wonderful lady, and she's the only child left of the Lemerts. They lost their other son years and years ago.

bw:  This family had a big impact on you.

jack:  Huge. Huge. They were a direct conduit from God to me.

bw:  Do you think that the way you live now is, in part, because of the way they lived, the way they treated you?

jack:  Oh, there's no doubt! I mean, they were real Christians. By real Christians I mean, they were followers of Jesus in the truest sense of the word. That love that they spilled over onto me, I could not escape. How do you make sense of that? They could have been like everybody else, just living life for themselves, but instead, they took someone like me in and made a huge difference in my life.

When I spoke at his funeral, I said that Henry will never fully comprehend—unless he can see from up there—the impact that he's had on not only my life, but the lives of my offspring as well. Plus, there's the ongoing impact that he continues to have on all the lives that God touches through me as I tell Henry's story also. The investment he made...how can you even calculate what the return on that investment is?

bw:  It's an inspiring story!

jack:  That's why I felt compelled to record my testimony and make it available. I feel compelled to reach out to the foster care community. I speak at foster care events every chance I get. I try and isolate foster care providers, try and work with foster kids that I think are having problems because I think I have an understanding of them and they feel a connection to me that they normally wouldn't have. I try to be a source of encouragement because, you know, what the Lemerts did for me didn't bear fruit until 15 years later. They never gave up on me. I think foster parents sometimes think they're going to see the fruit of their investment right away and , when they don't, they get discouraged. I know, personally, how having foster children can upset their homes, you know what I mean? Hopefully, when they hear my story, they will be encouraged to just do what God calls them to do and then let Him do His thing.

bw:  So, let's flash forward to your current life here in Fort Wayne. Things are going well?

jack:  Oh, yeah!

bw:  Your family seems to be doing great!

jack:  Yeah, I feel like I'm one of the wealthiest men on the planet. I have a wife that loves me and supports me, and I adore her. I've been married 27 years and have four great kids. (A fifth daughter, Jordan, lived for only one day.) They're all involved in God's work. I've always felt strongly that, with the radical rescue that God performed on the soul of Jack Curtis, He must have had something special in mind for my offspring.

bw:  So, does Jack Curtis have dreams for the future?

jack:  Some day, I'd like to be able to give back to the foster care community some way, to build my own orphanage, or something of that nature. I just want to continue to invest in people, the way the Lemerts and others have invested in me. I mean, there wouldn't be too many trees that were more kinked than mine. There aren't too many people out there that would have as many twisted ideas about life and the meaning of life and the level of selfishness that I had. I didn't care about anybody, and I learned at a young age, if Jack didn't take care of Jack, nobody else was going to. If you had something I wanted, I took it from you. If it was a woman, if it was your money, if it was your possessions, it didn't matter. And as an angry person, if you crossed me, I'd hurt you, and probably go brag about it. We're talking about a pretty degenerate person, you know, in terms of dysfunction.

This old soul ain't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I know where my heart was, and I know where it is today, and that can only be done through the power of the Holy Spirit. In John 6 it says, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free." That's what's set me free, God's truth. For that I'm grateful, because I would have destroyed my life. I would have destroyed myself. I would have destroyed my marriage. I would have destroyed everything around me, there's no doubt in my mind, if it wasn't for God, for Christ, and for His truth that He's given to us.


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Below, you can listen to the recorded version of Jack's testimony
that he referenced above.

Jack and his wife, Jill, along with their four children, live in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

His story is part of a series called Spotlight on the Harvest Fellowship website. As new stories are added, you can check out other people's stories on the archive page.

Story & Feature Photograph by Brad Wieland.

 

published 11/01/2010