Joseph J. Haugabrook

Who am I? Where did I come from? What was it like? What did my ancestors do? what were their struggles and successes? What did they build; tear down, or change? What did they do to shape the future? What am I doing to perpetuate, or change a legacy that may be defining who I am? Mark Powers asked the same questions; went digging; the answers changed his life.

Shela, by age fourteen, had lost her loving father. Her mother, who couldn't cope with losing her husband, died of a drug overdose. Finding herself on the streets, homeless, scared, and confused, she turned to drinking and drugs. To eat, and feed her habit, she turned to crime. She gave birth before age eighteen. Feeling she could no longer cope, she tried to end it all. But, Karl Ward, a young man that helped the poor, met her by chance, and showed her there was a way out.

James had finally pulled Alice from years of mental suffering, and failures in life; stemming from learning she was abandoned, like an unwanted pet, while still a baby. Then, by accident, Alice met her maternal mother, who, through greed and deception, nearly destroyed the empire, and, family, Alice and James had built.

The agony of losing both parents, in Chicago, became too much for Jamell. He left and headed for Montezuma, Georgia, feeling the birth place of his parents would help him better cope with their passing. Little did he know rumors and secrets of his family's past would haunt him like a ghost.

Sometimes you just get fed up. Mark Mark Powers was fed up He couldn't take it any longer He was tired of the treatments that degraded him as a man. It had to stop; and he was going to stop it, or die trying.

The law said no Jobi and Mary said yes For Jobi and Mary it was not color; it was love. They fell in love in small town Georgia. Laws forced them into the shadows. One day they decided to step out, and love openly. They loved Georgia, in-spite of its laws. And, built an empire in Montezuma, Georgia, the town they loved.