June 19, 2011 Unarmed security officer would rather talk out problems www.privateofficer.com
Flowood MS June 19 2011 Like the fictional character Andy Taylor, who patrolled the town of Mayberry on television during the 1960s, Freddie Funches doesn’t carry a gun.
“I don’t own one, I don’t want one around me,” says Funches, 58, who serves as the lone security guard for NewSouth NeuroSpine in Flowood. “A guy asked me the other day ‘why don’t you carry a pistol?’ I asked him ‘why do I need one?’
“People come here who need help. They don’t come to cause problems. And most of the time if you’ve got a gun on you, people feel inferior to you. I don’t want people thinking like that. And another thing about a gun … if you pull that trigger, you don’t just cause someone to lose their life. Yours goes away, too.”
This is Funches’ 35th year working in security. He has the gift of gab. He stands 5-foot-11 and weighs a stone-solid 250 pounds. He loves people. And he loves his job.
“It’ll be 6:15, and he’ll be saying, ‘I’ve got to hurry up. It’s getting late,’ ” laughs his wife of the past eight years, Cathy, the homeless coordinator for the city of Jackson. “He doesn’t have to be at work until 7 and it only takes about 15 minutes to get there.”
It is his job, he says, to make people who come to the spine center in pain feel a little better, if only for a few seconds.
Funches knows about pain. In 1994, his 19-year-old son, Carlos, was gunned down on the campus of Callaway High School. Six years later, Funches’ 22-year-old son, Keith, died in an automobile accident.
It was a living hell getting through both losses, he says.
“But I believe in God when he says never hold on to something that you can’t let go of. And I had to believe in something or I would’ve gone insane,” he says. “I’m grateful to have had them for 19 and 22 years when others don’t have their children for that long. I have to look at the bright side rather than the dim side.”
OK, working as a security guard at a spine center isn’t the most dangerous job in the law enforcement world. But anytime humans and physical pain are involved, situations can arise.
And understand this: When NewSouth NeuroSpine opened three years ago, it was the doctors who wanted to lure Funches away from Methodist Rehabilitation Center, where they had worked with Funches many of his 18 years there.
It took more than a year, but they finally snagged him in March 2009.
“I know the doctors, I know their families,” Funches says. “I’ve watched their children grow up.”
“Freddie does so much,” says Frank York, CEO of NewSouth, “whether it’s counseling a patient who has gotten upset, being able to calm them down and get them where they need to be. Freddie would do anything to protect our 90 to 100 employees. We know that. There is just a real sense of trust there with the doctors.
“They know they could call on Freddie in any situation, and he would handle it discreetly and respectfully toward the patients. And at least two to three times a week, there will be a situation come up where we’re saying ‘thank God for Freddie Funches.’ “
Funches was a four-sport athlete at Murrah High School but decided to drop out prior to his senior year, in 1973.
“I was going to be 19, which made me ineligible for sports,” he says. “It’s not the right way to look at things, I know that now. But at the time, sports was everything to me.”
Plus, something else was eating at him: “My daddy died of a stroke when I was a year old, so my mama (Eliza) had to raise six kids on her home, cleaning houses around Jackson and later working out at (Mississippi State Hospital).
“I was the fifth youngest of the six, and it had gotten to a point where I was tired of seeing her have to do everything herself. Against her wishes, I wanted to get a job and help. At the time, that seemed more important than education. I told her I could go back at some point and get my GED.”
His work ethic was established by watching his mom.
“She made us understand that life doesn’t owe you anything,” he says. “If you want something you have to go work for it.”
At age 9, Funches used to sing and dance on the corner of Lamar and Fortification streets. Adults from the neighborhood walking past would often toss him a nickel or dime.
About that same time, he sold vegetables door to door. “A man grew all kinds of stuff – tomatoes, okra, you name it – and would give us a dime for every basket we sold,” he says.
When he quit school, Funches took a job as a bricklayer. Then he ran into Jimmy Smith, the father of the former Jackson State and NFL star receiver by the same name.
“Mr. Smith was a juvenile officer and into mentoring youth, keeping them off the streets,” Funches says. “He saw me and said, ‘I’m starting a softball team. You look like you could play a little ball.’ So I went and played on his team. But he also got me jobs at the Schlitz Beer distributorship and at the RC Cola plant.”
His next job, Funches says, “was me walking into destiny.” Smith helped him land a position as a jailer at the Hinds County Detention Center. Funches went through training at the Jackson police academy. Except for a six-month excursion to Chicago, he worked at the detention center from 1979 to 1990.
“It was a tough, tiresome job, but I saw myself in a lot of the youngsters who were in there,” says Funches, who was divorced in 2001 and has two grown daughters and three stepchildren. “They just didn’t have the mama and the guidance I had.”
Funches lost his mother to cancer in 1981.
“The doctors told her it wasn’t that bad, that she would live a long, productive life. But I just think Mama was tired. She had raised her kids. She had done what she felt like was her rightful duty.”
A year later, Funches honored his mother’s wishes and earned his GED.
Funches started at Methodist in the kitchen, making sandwiches. When a job opened in security, he quickly applied.
He was working two jobs at the time – 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Methodist and and 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. at County Market grocery.
“Sleeping wasn’t really on my mind,” he says. “I was just trying to survive. And I don’t use that term loosely. When you’re trying to get where you want to be, you have to put a little extra into it.”
His life took a turn for the better when Methodist offered him a promotion at its outpatient clinic in Flowood. He was able to quit his job at County Market.
Today, he has a position he wouldn’t swap with anyone.
“When you work with people who appreciate you, it makes you want to go the extra mile for them,” he says. “I’d probably do it for free. But the fact that I get paid for it is just the icing on the cake.”
That’s what he wants today’s youth to understand – chase dreams, rendezvous with destiny.
“When I was a kid, we used to shoot marbles, make kites out of newspaper and sticks. We were taught by my mama to always treat people the way we wanted to be treated,” he says. “Today, kids stay in the house and feel like the world owes them whatever they want. What they have to understand is, the world is a big place. Whatever you want, you can have it if you’re willing to put the work in. It will happen. Just stay strong and do the right thing.
“Look at me. People make more money than me, but I guarantee you they don’t feel any more fulfilled than I do. In the end, that’s what it’s all about.
Source:clarion-ledger
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