Biker Bounces Back--He’s Mayor

High on marijuana, Quaaludes and alcohol, Ajax Ackerman left a party, got behind the wheel of a van and smashed into a telephone pole.

He nearly died--and was sorry he hadn’t. With the previous decade lost to addictions, the decade ahead looked hopeless too.

Ten years later: At 41, Ackerman still has a flowing beard, hair tied in a ponytail reaching halfway down his back, two earrings in his left ear. He still goes by his nickname, after the warrior Ajax in a movie about street gangs. He still rides his Harley-Davidson and wears black leather biker duds.

But as he strolls into the police department, officers and secretaries alike rush to greet him.

“Hey, Mayor,” says Capt. Brian Moeller.

For Port Huron Mayor Gerald “Ajax” Ackerman, it’s been some kind of journey.

Born to an alcoholic mother, a drunk himself at 14, today he’s the leader of a city of 37,000, a role model for kids, motivation for others trying to break free of their addictions. He works part-time at a mental health center, runs a drug counseling facility and volunteers at a shelter for runaways.

“ ‘The sky’s the limit. Don’t let anybody stop you,’ ” Ackerman says he counsels young people. “I want to let them know they can do anything.”

Troubled Childhood, Rebellious Adolescence

He didn’t always think so.

Taken by the state from his mother and adopted at 18 months, he was “the evilest child,” recalls his sister, DeAnn Fierman.

“He was in trouble from Day 1,” she says. “It was an attention-getting device.”

Today, Ackerman says, he knows part of his problem was attention deficit disorder. Back in the 1960s, he was just “hyperactive.”

At 14, Ackerman left suburban Detroit for a military academy in Illinois. The increased structure helped--until some seniors sneaked beer into the barracks and asked him to keep watch. In return, they gave him one.

“It was ice cold, the most wonderful thing I tasted in my life,” he says. “Some of the pleasure in that beer was symbolic. It opened the door to life for me.”

He bought eight more beers from the older students.

“I was fascinated with myself-- the ego lift, esteem lift. I went in the bathroom to watch myself drink that beer.”

He threw up, slept in his vomit, woke with a hangover. And he was hooked.

In 1972, his sophomore year, he returned home and got high on whatever he could get: marijuana, mescaline, Quaaludes, cocaine.

“Being cool was so important to me, being tough was so important. And I could be that person when I was high,” he says.

After abortive runs at college, which he left after two semesters, and the Navy, which kicked him out for drinking, Ackerman entered a 10-year period--his 20s--that was pretty much lost to drinking and drugs.

He spent 57 days in jail following a fight. His parents, after years of trying to get him out of trouble, had had enough. They moved to Florida.

“He got in with a rough bunch, there was peer pressure, he felt he had to go along with it,” says his father, Charles Ackerman. “We couldn’t control him then.”

By age 30, Ackerman had been in four rehabilitation centers. He married, but booze and cocaine ended that after a year; he was 31 when his wife moved out, taking their baby.

Around then, he crashed into the telephone pole. One leg was fractured in seven places. Both arms were broken. His ankle was put back together with screws.

“When I went to see him in the hospital, he told me he messed up again. Not because of the accident, but because he didn’t die,” his sister says.

On the day that would be the turning point in his bitter journey, Ackerman stuck half a gram of cocaine in his arm--and felt nothing.

It was a few months after his release from the hospital, and he’d gone from snorting to shooting the drug. Then even that didn’t work.

He saw two choices: Get help, or kill himself.

“My world was crumbling,” he says. “But I also realized of all the things I had done in my life, one thing I had never done is give life a chance.”

Getting straight began with a monthlong stay in another rehabilitation center, then constant vigilance. His one relapse, a three-day drinking binge in 1987, strengthened his resolve, he says.

“He didn’t start living until after he was 30,” says his father, with whom he has reconciled.

About 10 years ago, Ackerman settled in Port Huron. For a time, he lived in a shelter. He borrowed money for community college classes, graduated with honors. Now he’s six credits away from a degree from Eastern Michigan University.

He’s studying government, but his interest in politics developed independently.

Working with runaways at a shelter, then serving as an intern in the county prosecutor’s office, he saw things he thought he could change, especially programs involving young people.

“He has real insight, particularly because of his chaotic life,” says Jim Johnson, who hired Ackerman at Community Mental Health.

Nicole Oswald was 14 when she met Ackerman through a drug intervention program at school. Now 19, she works as an office assistant. “He made me think about things on my own that I needed to think about,” she says. “He’s a very cool guy.”

As a founder of a sober motorcycle club, Ackerman goes to schools to talk to kids about the dangers of substance abuse. Four years ago, he met Nancee Armstrong when he went to talk to her alternative education class.

“It’s rare that youth identifies with anything adults do,” she says. But Ackerman won over the students.

And the teacher. The two married in 1996.

Port Huron lies along the St. Clair River, right across from Canada. This is Middle America. A long-haired, tattooed, earring-wearing ex-druggie on a Harley tends to stand out.

But Ackerman says his appearance helped, allowing him to be “a good liaison between youth and adults because I refused to grow up.”

Eventually, the grown-ups took notice. In 1994, the National Assn. of Social Workers named him the Michigan Public Citizen of the Year for his work in the community.

A year later, he ran for city council and lost. But he was appointed to the council last summer when another member stepped down. When he ran again in November, he topped the 14-candidate field. The candidate with the most votes is appointed mayor.

Before every council meeting, Ackerman stands outside, smoking his unfiltered Camel cigarettes (“From all the things I’ve done, this is the last one that’s got to go; I just don’t know when”) and greeting townspeople.

He’s proud of the title of mayor --especially what it means to his family.

“My parents sat by and suffered. This made them feel like it was worthwhile,” he says. “Their patience paid off.”

To his sister, he is “living proof you can change your life and turn it around. You don’t have to be wealthy. You don’t have to be lucky. You have to work at it, and he did.”

Life still is not easy for Ackerman.

He continues to attend weekly 12-step meetings and leads three groups himself each week.

His part-time job doesn’t always pay the bills, and he owes money on his college loans. His first wife rarely lets him see his daughter, now 11, and he gets upset when the subject comes up.

Juggling family, city duties, job and volunteer work is tough.

But giving is receiving, he says. “I’m real happy with who I am. I’m real happy with my place,” he says. “I don’t have to prove anything to anybody.”