Pubdate: Sun, 11 Sep 2005
Source: South Bend Tribune (IN)
Copyright: 2005 South Bend Tribune
Contact:  http://www.southbendtribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/621
Author: Rose Mary Reiz, The Flint Journal

'I'VE LOST MY SIGHT, BUT I SEE THINGS CLEARLY'

Belief Puts Ex-Prostitute, Addict On New A Path.

FLINT, Mich. -- Rita Willingham-Person, a former prostitute and drug 
addict, is blind, but now she sees.

"I've lost my sight, but I see things clearly," said Willingham-Person, 40, 
of Flint. "God has given me a different kind of sight now." Blindness is 
the latest chapter in Willingham-Person's remarkable life, a survival story 
that includes homelessness, rapes, jail sentences, shootings and drug 
addiction.

Willingham-Person, a big, softhearted woman with a throaty chuckle, began 
living on Flint's streets after she ran away from home at 12. Soon, she was 
selling sex to shop workers and others who cruised Dort Highway.

She turned tricks in her customers' cars and brandished a steak knife at 
those who were reluctant to let her go. Over the years, she was jailed, 
raped and threatened. She began smoking crack cocaine and, in 1988, was 
shot at a drug house.

"Every car I got in, I wondered, 'Am I gonna get out?' " she said. "Every 
rape, I'd wonder, 'Is he gonna kill me after he's done?' "

Her family never gave up on her and, in 1989, they persuaded her to enter 
Detroit Teen Challenge, a Christian training center for troubled youths. 
The program helped her get off drugs and earn a high school diploma. But 
later, when a series of jobs fizzled, she returned to drugs and prostitution.

God, she said, had other plans for her. So did her next-door neighbor.

Lessie Jackson, pastor of Ephesus Baptist Church in Flint, moved next door 
to Willingham-Person in 1996.

"I'd sit and watch Rita from my window," Jackson said. "I saw how she was 
dressed and that she was in and out of different cars all the time. I'd 
say, 'Lord, there's got to be a better way for her than this.' "

Jackson, a recovered drug addict for 17 years, saw herself in 
Willingham-Person. Instead of passing judgment, she prayed. One day, she 
felt God tell her to approach her neighbor.

"I called to her, 'Miss Rita, how're you doing?' She said, 'I'm doing 
fine.' I said, 'I just want to pray with you.' Then, as I began to talk to 
her and pray with her, she started to cry."

Eventually, Willingham-Person visited Jackson's church. Her experience 
there was so dramatic that she returned home and made a poster declaring, 
"This house is no longer a crack house," and taped it to her front door.

"From that point on, Rita's life was no longer the same," Jackson said.

Old ways didn't disappear overnight. At one point, Willingham-Person was 
turning tricks and going to church.

"I remember one night turning a trick and another girl said to me, 'Are you 
going back out?' I said, 'No, I gotta go to church now.' She looked at me 
like I was crazy."

Gradually, God's way won.

"Rita began to come to church every Sunday and for every meeting," Jackson 
said. "She was there singing and helping with the children. She said, 'Miss 
Lessie, I've been in this program and that program, but it took God to 
change me."'

The right man didn't hurt, either. Willingham-Person met her future 
husband, Ronald Person, at a Super Bowl party. They have been married for 
two years.

Free of drugs and prostitution, Willingham-Person got a job at the 
Pentecostal Tabernacle Church in Flint, where she and her husband became 
members.

Every once in a while, someone from her old life made an appearance.

"I was walking around the church one day when I saw a girl I used to smoke 
crack with. She came up to me and said, 'Girl, I expected to see you on a 
street corner but not the corner of a church."'

Last year, Willingham-Person began to have trouble seeing out of her right 
eye. During months of glasses, tests and appointments with specialists, she 
became totally blind in her right eye and began losing sight in her left.

Doctors still are puzzled about the cause of her blindness, which is now 
complete. Willingham-Person has her own theory.

"When I was on the street, I was valuable to the devil's kingdom. I think 
after 20 years of trying to kill me, the devil is angry and figures that 
blindness will kill me. But I know that God is more powerful."

With the support of her husband, family, friends and church, 
Willingham-Person is facing new challenges with a new sense of peace.

"I'm happier now than when I could see," she said. "I don't have to worry 
anymore about turning tricks to get money for crack. When I go to bed at 
night, I sleep like a baby."

Willingham-Person can no longer work and receives Social Security 
disability payments. She remains involved with her church, family and 
neighborhood, where she and Jackson sit on the porch, visit with 
neighborhood children and "keep the peace."

She still loves to dance, "and if I was sure I wouldn't fall off, I'd dance 
every day on the porch."

When she's not listening to the Bible on audiotape, Willingham-Person has a 
weakness for television, especially the soap opera "General Hospital."

"I love that one because me and Bobbie, one of the characters, were both 
hookers. Now she's the top nurse."

Willingham-Person's next challenge will be to attend what she calls "blind 
people school," something her family and friends are encouraging her to do, 
even while hoping that her blindness will reverse itself as mysteriously as 
it occurred.

Willingham-Person's strongest desire is to help turn young women from the 
kind of life that held her hostage for so long.

"Rita has a lot to say to young people about life on the streets," said 
Marvin C. Pryor, pastor of Pentecostal Tabernacle. "She's vibrant and 
faithful and is living proof of the transformation that Christ can do.

"Rita has lost her sight, but gained her vision."
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MAP posted-by: Elizabeth Wehrman