With childhood trauma in spotlight, Milwaukee native's book profiles woman who saves lives

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Jama Connor Hedgecoth (left) and Milwaukee native Chrishaunda Lee Perez jointly wrote a new book about Noah’s Ark, a sprawling animal rescue sanctuary in rural Georgia, founded by Hedgecoth. It has survived despite the odds.

A real-life parable of faith, healing and survival in rural Georgia is finding a receptive audience in urban Milwaukee.

As told in a newly published book by a Milwaukee native, it's the story of a place called Noah’s Ark: a 250-acre nature sanctuary with more than 100 species of rescued animals.

Some 1,500 lions, bears, tigers, zebras, primates, eagles, llamas, emus — each with their own habitats, homes and pastures — call it home.

“Currently we don’t have elephants, giraffes or rhinoceroses, but we’ve got everything else,” said Jama Connor Hedgecoth, who founded Noah’s Ark in Locust Grove, Ga.

To those who see life in terms of miracles, Noah's Ark might qualify. Hedgecoth, whose home-schooled education stopped when she married at 14 and became a teenage mother, rescued animals for years with meager to nonexistent funds. She learned to live at times without electricity or heat. She learned which restaurant Dumpsters could feed animals and people.

But what captured attention in high-poverty Milwaukee, where untold children grow up amid traumatized circumstances, is that Hedgecoth found time to rescue children nearly as often as she took in animals.

With sleeping bags covering her floors, Hedgecoth over the years fostered 407 youth whose backgrounds were often as abandoned and abused as her animals. In the process, "Momma Jama" created an environment where children and animals helped heal each other — a therapeutic practice endorsed by many mental health clinicians.

The story will be revisited Wednesday in Milwaukee at the signing of the book, “Share the Dream — Building Noah’s Ark One Prayer at a Time” (2018; Mountain Arbor Press).

Milwaukee-born writer Chrishaunda Lee Perez presents Hedgecoth’s life as a journey of unshakable faith against the odds.

Co-sponsors for Wednesday’s book signing are the Wisconsin Humane Society as well as a new coalition of social agencies and nonprofits that want to tackle the epidemic of civilian trauma that public health researchers say is at the root of much of the city’s mental illness, addiction, social aggression, unemployment and homelessness.

That group is known as SWIM, short for Scaling Wellness in Milwaukee. It's organized by Marquette University, which is hosting the book signing on campus at the student union.

After years of research and friendship with Hedgecoth, Perez felt comfortable writing the entire narrative in Hedgecoth's first-person voice. Perez's prose effectively blends the voices and the visions of the two women — one from a poor rural southern upbringing, the other who grew up poor and homeless in Milwaukee’s inner city. Both will be at Wednesday's signing.

After her four birth children were grown, Hedgecoth legally adopted six more. Admission to her park is free to anyone — hundreds come every week. “I truly believe that the more one gives, the more one will be given,” Hedgecoth said in the book.

The premise that the world is abundant and giving (rather than full of limitations) echoes another native Milwaukeean, Oprah Winfrey, the aunt of Perez. The Hedgecoth-Perez outlook echoes a well-known Winfrey aphorism: “Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough.”

In her book, Perez omits the family connection to her aunt. In an interview, however, Perez was open to the comparison.

“My aunt’s beliefs have inspired me,” Perez said. “Those beliefs are in me because they authentically come from my own lived experiences, but I must say my aunt nurtured them in me because that’s all she taught me.”

Teaching by example, Winfrey made an entire career out of sharing her enthusiasm for people, authors and ideas that excited and fascinate her. Perez talks about childhood memories of sitting cross-legged in the corner of her aunt’s television studio in Chicago, sketching in a notebook and listening while her aunt carried out her interviews.

The book signing also comes three months after Winfrey broadcast her own documentary in March on Milwaukee’s trauma epidemic. The segment, which aired on the CBS show "60 Minutes," was inspired by a series of stories last year in the Journal Sentinel, called “A Time to Heal.”

SERIES: A Time to Heal

“We are excited to have Chrishaunda and Jama here to share this healing story,” said Amy Lovell, who heads SWIM with her husband, Marquette President Mike Lovell.

Anne Reed, president of the Wisconsin Humane Society, embraces the idea that animals suffer traumatic experiences of abuse and abandonment — but also that caring for those same animals can be clinically therapeutic for traumatized humans. Service dogs sometimes are seen wearing vests that say “PTSD” — post-traumatic stress disorder — for the same reason.

“There’s a lot of research on this,” said Reed, adding that it’s why her organization wants to co-sponsor the book signing. “There’s proven healing for animal and proven healing for the person. It’s a kind of alchemy that’s really positive.”

The story of the modern-day Noah has its share of drama. Hedgecoth is proud of her father, the Rev. Leonard Connor, “an old-fashioned Pentecostal preacher.” He preached to Asian families, white families, black families.

Once at a tent revival in Missouri, an angry white bigot came back armed with a gun, threatening to kill blacks inside. Her dad left the pulpit, fought the man to the ground, disarmed him and then dragged him to the altar and held him in a half-nelson until the man prayed. Blacks who the man had meant to shoot welcomed the bigot with outstretched arms. “That man ended up being born again that day because of my daddy,” Hedgecoth said.

In a nerve-wracking moment, the book recounts a day when a fleet of vans pulled up at Noah's Ark with agents from state agencies as well as the U.S. Department of Agriculture. They knew Hedgecoth lacked all the permits and licenses she needed and were prepared to shut her down that day.

Hedgecoth gave them an extensive tour. They weren't prepared for how many animals they saw and how well they were kept: “They decided that it would be easier to allow the animals to remain where they were rather than try to relocate them all." All the permits were issued on the spot.

Growing up with itinerant preacher parents, Hedgecoth has seen her share of acute poverty. But it wasn't until she met a teenage boy lying in a sleeping bag next to the Dumpsters behind a grocery store that she began taking in foster youth.

“I began collecting young people almost as fast as I collected animals in need. I could not believe how many children were living alone on the streets with no one to help guide them,” Hedgecoth says in the book.

She showed them how to care for animals. “I watched otherwise irritable, misunderstood and highly defensive teens grow a greater appreciation for life, as well as care for a life not their own.”

Book signing and discussion

Co-authors Jama Connor Hedgecoth and Milwaukee-native Chrishaunda Lee Perez

4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Wednesday

Marquette University student union

Ballroom E

1442 W. Wisconsin Ave., Milwaukee

Sponsored by the Wisconsin Humane Society and Scaling Wellness in Milwaukee