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HOME: Belonging. Living. Growing.

Home is a place where you can catch a dream and ride it to the end of the line and back… Home is a place to become yourself… (Theo Pelletier)

Adrian Blackwell carries a sense of home with him wherever he goes. There’s the home where his small daughters grow in love. The church home where his family worships. And there are homes that represent hope all over the city of Rock Island.

Even his office possesses a welcoming sense of home. It’s a rehabbed warehouse in downtown Rock Island — where exposed ductwork and brick hint of history and play with inviting bright contemporary design.

Adrian’s days are focused on a mission: to serve the city’s most vulnerable residents, providing housing and training that fosters economic self-sufficiency and personal growth. He has an affinity for the entire spectrum of those he serves: the children in public housing, the single moms, the elderly residents for whom living can be a day-to-day struggle.

He’s resident services coordinator for the Rock Island Housing Authority (RIHA). And in that solo role, at one time covered by three employees, he wears an entire closetful of hats. He counsels individuals on home rental and ownership. He oversees an after-school program for kids of Manor Homes, a neighborhood family housing project.

He carries a sizeable case management load, con­necting people with agencies that encourage family self-sufficiency through money management, work readiness, and job training. He walks across a couple of parking lots to chat with the elderly residents of Spencer Towers. He’s a hearing officer for grievances, bringing wisdom to bear with people who have been denied housing because of a range of behavior or personal history.

Adrian is a face of hope and home for residents in the area of most highly-concentrated poverty in the Quad Cities.

“I joke with people that I want to work myself out of a job, for people to become self-sufficient, responsible, and successful,” he says. He brings his own measure of hope and encouragement. “I’m thankful that I’ve been blessed with a home and a family and a job. I try to be a role model for others.” One of his greatest joys is the kids who flock around him, drawn by his deep bass voice and steady presence. “There’s the hope,” he says.

Adrian grew up and attended college in Galesburg, Illinois. There in the library he met Cherie (then Bergert), a woman who called Davenport and St. Paul home.

Adrian’s character and vocational aspirations had been shaped by some pivotal experiences. In high school, he cut grass and shoveled driveways for older people in his neighborhood. “I’d go in to get warm or to have some tea and cookies. We’d sit there and talk, and I gained their perspective on life, their wisdom.” Gerontology and public health became a focus of his graduate work. “You go to school for a purpose, and I became interested in the low-income population, in helping them find a way out.”

A tiny non-denominational church drew in Adrian as a teenager. “It felt like a larger extended family,” he recalls. This faith tradition embraced altar calls, testimonies, open prayer, and a focus on sin and “being saved.” So when he and Cherie joined a Lutheran church steeped in “grace, the love of God, and the Bible, it was almost a 360 for me.”

Now St. Paul is home. So is a house in Eldridge. From the church and experience of his youth, Adrian carries a sense that “the guy is the spiritual leader.” Granted, times and perspectives have changed. But Adrian takes seriously his responsibility as a father to shape faith and values in his daughters, Adrianna (5) and Amira (almost 3). The Blackwells hold dear a framework that grounds them: weekly worship, prayer at meal times, bedtime Bible stories.

Adrian laughs: “Sometimes in church, parents can’t get the full message because of our own kids or the kids around us. That’s when I go back and tune in the radio to 1420AM (St. Paul’s radio broadcast at 8:30 a.m. each Sunday on WOC Radio) to listen again.” He delights in how Adrianna “plays church” at home, reciting prayers and the creed by heart, pretending to dip a communion wafer into wine.

Home. Adrian notices signs of home wherever he goes — whether it’s a meal at his own kitchen table in Eldridge, a simple meal served at the communion table, or a communal meal for an elderly Rock Islander in a secure, safe place. When we are at home, we belong. We live. We grow.

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"Thou hast given so much to me, Give one thing more, - a grateful heart;" ~George Herbert