DETROIT – Larry Smith is on a mission to remodel his childhood home on Woodlawn Avenue on Detroit’s East Side.
He’s looking to turn it into a recovery home to better continue the work he’s been doing for decades.
“What really prompted me to do this, was people in this neighborhood just dying from drugs,” Smith says. “Overdosing here, overdosing there.”
Larry never had a problem with drugs.
His mistake was joining a Detroit gang in the 1970s and that led to a murder conspiracy conviction and 44 years behind bars.
About 14 years in, he found God and his calling.
(You ask yourself) Why am I here? What am I here for? Then you find your purpose in life.”
Larry’s friend Brian Lucas has run his own recovery house and knows how tough it can be.
But he has faith in his friend.
“Larry didn’t get out of prison and decide to start helping people,” Lucas says. “He’s been helping people for decades through faith and the counsel of prisoners.
This is just next chapter in his life.”
“I can help people and put people in a position so they can leave from this home, and be a positive person in this community,” Larry says. “They can leave that stuff behind and change their whole life. I changed my life, but I had the will get to happen and the transformation that I had inside for me to be the person I am today.”
Larry started a GoFundMe account to help raise money to start the renovations and hopes to have the house up and running next year sometime.