An angel with a badge

There are angels and saints among us, though we don’t always recognize who they are while they walk this earth.

It’s easy, of course, to pin such monikers on people like Mother Theresa. But the guy in the next cubicle or the house next door is a different story.

Dwayne Jones didn’t have to die for people to know he was an angel. For 12 years and more he worked as a probation officer at the Juvenile Court in Houma. That’s a dozen years of filling out forms and making reports for most people. In Dwayne’s case it involved a lot more.

He died Friday, and as word spread through the courthouse tears came to the eyes of some, who saw Dwayne as a gentle giant whose job was less of a duty for which one gets a check, but a ministry.

Judge Thaddeus “Jude” Fanguy had to make crucial decisions affecting the lives of children and the fates of families on a regular basis based on the work Dwayne did, and he was able to do so with confidence because he knew how enmeshed Dwayne was in his work, and that if anyone knew the kids who get in trouble in these parts it was indeed Dwayne and that was about all the judge needed to know.

“He got to know these kids and saw the circumstances out of which they were coming to us, not very good family situations,” the judge said. “It is amazing how he would try to address that. He would spend time with kids, mentoring them, and if they needed some stuff it was not unusual for him to buy clothing or other things. A lot of times even some of the acting-out behavior stopped because they were responding to his kindness. It wasn’t just a job.”

The people who work in City Court, where the juvenile cases are heard, got together Monday to remember and mourn the gentle giant they had all come to love, wrenched away from them in his prime by recently-developed health issues.

Someone talked about Christ figures among us, and everyone understood exactly what they meant when it came to Dwayne.

What he became to many children in need – whether that need be emotional, psychological or sometimes having to do with material things, was a friend and a champion.

That he was a probation officer is quite appropriate. The probation system as we know it was started in Boston, by a shoemaker named John Augustus, who used his own money to bond people out and assume responsibility for them when they got in trouble. Augustus was first and foremost a friend to those who were in trouble in the 1840s and the 1850s, and in that sense the tradition of using friendship and guidance to steer people out of jail and onto a path of being a valued member of the community is one that Dwayne lived.

Folks at court knew something was wrong last Wednesday, and Judge Fanguy told Dwayne to get some rest, go see a doctor, and make sure he could keep up his strength. He ended up going to the hospital but he never came out.

Now the judge and the others in city court, as well as the children of Terrebonne Parish, are left without an ally.

“In our work we believe we are there to do some good,” Judge Fanguy said. “Dwayne could always be depended upon to be there. When you realize someone like that is missing, it’s like a hole in you. I’ve got this concept of reality to where I consider that we are in the worldly, physical dimension. Christians and others believe death transcends us to another dimension of reality. In Christianity they talk about eternity and heaven. I don’t see that dimension as being distant, high up, away from us.”

The two realities interact, Judge Fanguy said.

Which might mean, in the final analysis, that Dwayne Jones will take his work as an angel just as much to heart as he did the task of serving in probation.

“With these kids, he is here,” he said. “They can’t see him but Dwayne is there with them. Hopefully he will influence them in a way they don’t suspect.”