Gangs, Drugs and Alcohol, I thought keeping him from the big three would keep him safe.

Gangs, Drugs and Alcohol, I thought keeping him from the big three would keep him safe.

I was wrong. Joel never touched drugs or alcohol. He didn't consume anything that was bad for him. Things he avoided included soft drinks, Mcdonald's, tobacco, alcohol, drugs, candy, energy drinks, etc. He worked out every day. He kept his mind focused and absorbed knowledge. He'd crave knowledge about anything that interested him. He built himself a forge in the back yard where he hand turned an air blower into the tuyere to make the coals hot for forging metal into blades. He long-boarded around the neighborhood in search of logs and cut down trees to bring home to make into charcoal for the forge. I'd come home to find him out back with a bow saw and an eight foot log. I'd ask him how he got it home. To which he replied so innocently, "I put it on my shoulder and skated home."

He was a marvel of strength, courage, and stamina.

Joel had a few very close friends. These friends are boys from the neighborhood but were orriginally met through school, youth soccer and mutual friends. Johnathan was the last friend from the neighborhood that Joel considered a good friend. Joel met Johnathan at aviation camp the summer of 2006. Joel didn't keep up with him after camp but about a year later, Johnathan moved to the neighborhood. They ran into each other while skating and imediately hit it off. Joel enjoyed Johnathan's company because of shared interests in aviation, skate boarding and fishing. Plus Johnathan loved to work on projects as did Joel. Projects that entailed building and working out solutions. Hands on things. They found things and made projects out of them. They once made a Leyden Jar just for fun. Joel knew so much about everything.

But it was about a year ago, November of '08, that Joel met some new friends at school. These weren't the kind of kids I was used to seeing Joel with. They had a very negative outlook on everything, something Joel had not experienced in his innocent life. These kids ultimately were a big part of Joel's demise. They were not thug gang members or gun-toting wiggers. But they were a "group", as they called themselves, a "secret group". A boy named Adam Chauncey seemed to be the leader. He had to go to Bartow every few weeks for a piss test as part of his probation. He had been busted for pot. Then there was Heather-Ann Bartlett, the one who ultimately drove Joel away, who last spoke to him, who hasn't told anyone what she said to him to send him off. Adam's brother was Aaron, a fat goon of a kid who was really big for his age. It turns out he was only thirteen and smoked cigarettes left and right. Except for a kid named Josh Connley (I haven't really figured out his involvement in all this yet) they were from broken homes with no supervision. Homes where the kids hated their parents and their parents wished the kids weren't around. Actually, they weren't parents. They were all single mothers and some live-in boy friends. The homes weren't the loving homes that we have and Joel's other "real" friends have. Wholesome homes where the children have a Mother and a Father who love and care for them. These kids could come and go as they pleased. Stay at each others' house sometimes overnight without needing permission. They weren't required to tell mom where they were, when they were to be home or who they were with. These are the young adults that changed my boy. Not drugs. Not tobacco. Not Gangs. Not thugs. Not Alcohol. Just the influence of unsupervised kids who formed a "secret group". Joel wrote about this in his Journal and e-mail. One letter to his girl friend asked if he could invite someone into the group. Heather said no, she didn't trust the person Joel wanted to ask to join. According to these notes Heather did her best to make Joel feel bad about himself.