A Father’s Day Gift : Baby Daughter Inspires Homeless Man to Repair His Life

The first time 40-year-old James McFarland saw his youngest daughter, Bobbie Charisse, it was through the bulletproof glass of the visitors’ room at the Biscailuz Center jail. At first, he stood dazed. As the tears streamed from his eyes, he pressed his nose against the shield, trying in vain to make contact with hers.

“I tried talking to her, but she didn’t understand what was going on,” McFarland recalls. “She kept laughing. . . . ‘Oh God,’ I thought, ‘Why now? Why here?’ ”

McFarland, now living in a shelter for the homeless on Skid Row, says he is slowly addressing these questions while reacquainting himself with his 2-year-old daughter as a first step to getting off the streets and back into society. Chaplains at the Los Angeles Mission, McFarland’s temporary home, say he is winning the psychological battle faced by many fathers who grow up in broken homes and for whom Father’s Day has no particular meaning.

By taking time to visit his daughter, McFarland says he is trying to turn back the clock on his admittedly unsatisfactory attempts at fatherhood. “This is a chance to be something to somebody, to be a father to my child, and to be an example to other people who are in my situation.”

If he succeeds, mission officials say, McFarland will serve as a welcome example. “Many people take Father’s Day for granted, but a lot of men who come from broken homes face the pain of becoming like the fathers they never knew,” said Cedric J. Hinson, a chaplain at the mission, which emphasizes family contact.

Those close to McFarland say his problems began at a young age. His parents were divorced when he was 5. He spent his boyhood with his mother and a great-aunt.

“James didn’t spend nearly as much time as he should have with his father,” says Dorothy Smoot, McFarland’s mother, who lives in Memphis, Tenn.

Later, there was service in Vietnam, a failed marriage and a layoff from his job as a machine operator at a paper factory. McFarland left Memphis for Southern California more than 12 years ago, leaving behind in his mother’s care two daughters, Angela, now 18, and Janice, 17.

In Los Angeles, McFarland said his life changed dramatically when he began working for a local charter bus and car service. “I was raking in about $1,600 a week, and I was using up most of it on marijuana and other drugs before cocaine came into the picture. Some co-workers introduced me to it, and from then on, I used it to socialize . . . until I became addicted.” The addiction to cocaine was the start of a downhill slide. McFarland and his girlfriend, Verdester Powell, 35, were sharing an apartment in Inglewood before an argument ended their relationship. Powell later discovered she was pregnant.

Meanwhile, McFarland’s increasingly expensive drug habit cost him his apartment, forcing him to live in his car and make extended visits to friends’ homes “to secure a place to sleep.”

Last October, during a routine check, Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies discovered that he had failed to pay several traffic tickets and McFarland was carted off to County Jail to serve a 20-day sentence.

First Meeting

It was there that McFarland had his memorable first meeting with his daughter.

Bobbie was born June 15, 1987, one day before McFarland’s 38th birthday. But McFarland, by then a drifter on the streets of Los Angeles, was never told. Powell, a custodial supervisor employed with the Los Angeles Police Academy, said she used her police contacts to trace McFarland to Biscailuz Center in East Los Angeles. “I just wanted him to see his child,” she said.

“And was he shocked!” Powell exclaimed, raising her eyebrows as she recalled the meeting. “He didn’t know what to say on that day.”

After McFarland’s release from jail, home became a series of derelict cars and abandoned houses. “In the meantime, I was still doing little odds and ends, selling cans and stuff, to buy drugs,” he said.

It was only after Thanksgiving last year that McFarland said he finally recognized his dilemma. “I knew I needed help, but I was hardened. I felt then that the entire world didn’t care, so I wasn’t prepared to give anyone a chance to help me out.”

Turning Point

The turning point came in January when he walked into the Los Angeles Mission and enrolled in its spiritual growth program, which combines spiritual counseling with work experience.

Hinson said McFarland fit the profile of the majority of the 2,500 homeless men who seek refuge monthly at the private, nonprofit Los Angeles Mission. “He had a history of alcoholism and drug abuse, and he felt that the whole world didn’t care any longer, so he didn’t either.”

Shortly after he entered the mission’s program, McFarland requested help in locating his daughter. “We all prayed with him and a few days later he heard from the child’s mother,” Hinson said.

McFarland, who says he is waging a successful battle against drug addiction, now makes almost weekly visits to see Bobbie. Powell, who has remarried, said she has no objections.

“This is what I should have been doing all the time,” McFarland said, noting that he had last seen his two daughters in Memphis almost six years ago. “I really feel bad about it.

“And now there is not much I can give (Bobbie) materially,” added McFarland, who receives a $10 weekly stipend for his work at the mission. “But I want her to know that I am always around and that I am her father.”

Father’s Day Celebration

During a visit last week, Bobbie, clothed in a pink dress, was at the door to greet her father. He picked her up in his arms, and as he began to smother her with kisses they rubbed noses. McFarland thinks he has taken the first steps to overcome the odds.

Today he is looking forward to what promises to be a more memorable meeting with his daughter. Powell has planned an early Father’s Day party and a celebration to mark last week’s birthdays of both father and daughter.

McFarland said he has requested no expensive presents. “Being with her is enough. I just want to sit back and enjoy it.”