Several months ago, some of the staff at the Boys and Girls Club of Brown County were cleaning out a storage room and came across a piece of artwork that had been framed and stored away. The current employees didn’t know where it had come from.
The CEO of the club, Katherine Palmer, states that the picture was hanging up in the club when she started working there in April of 2019. It was eventually put in storage and recently found again, sort of by accident.
The mystery of the artwork began to set in at the club. Eventually, the staff decided to try and find who had drawn the piece and get in contact with them again. The club has a lot of art contests and competitions, but the pieces usually aren’t framed, such as this piece, so the thought of where it came from was intriguing.
After doing a little digging, and by using an ID number that was written on the bottom of the piece, it was found that the artist was 33-year-old Korey Leverett, who had come to Brownwood from Cañon City, Colorado, when he was 13 years old.
Korey attended the club from 2004 to 2007, which means that the artwork was hanging in the club for at least 10 years. Having artwork hang for such a long amount of time is unusual. Katherine, the CEO, states that the club runs art contests throughout the entire year, and many pieces come and go.
When they reached out to Korey and told him they had found his drawing, and asked if he would like for his piece to be mailed to him, he was shocked. His first response was, “holy cow, that’s old.”
Korey states that he had drawn the picture for an art contest when he attended the club, but he didn’t remember what kind of contest it was because it was so long ago. The picture had gotten first place and was framed and hung on the wall, but none seems to know who framed it. That’s still a mystery.
As I looked at the drawing, I could see a depth in Korey’s eyes. When I asked him what he was thinking about when he drew the picture, he said “I was just wanting to put myself on canvas.” He states that he was going through a lot when he first arrived at the club, and he just wanted how he felt to reflect on the paper.
While chatting over the phone one day, we began talking about what brought Korey to Brownwood TX. He said “there’s a story behind that, if you don’t mind me getting too personal.”
Korey is the oldest of seven children. He grew up in Cañon City, Colorado and lived there until the time he came to Brownwood, Texas. The story leading up to his departure was not an easy one for him to tell. He faced many tough challenges during his time as a child, and then into his teen years at home.
From the time Korey was two-years-old, his biological mother was no longer a part of his life. He had a lot of different stepmoms growing up, as his father had been married seven or eight times by the time he left home.
He recalls his father’s “third or fourth wife” taking a potato peeler to his arm as punishment. Another one of his father’s wives slapped him, and then locked him in his room for four years after he asked if he could get ice cream.
He was locked in his room from the time he was nine years old to the time he was 13. His meals were provided to him by being slid underneath the door, like his room was a prison cell. There were locks on the doors and windows that prevented him from leaving the room.
“I got my three meals a day, and I got my schoolwork done. My dad worked for the prison, so he knew all the legal loopholes, I guess,” stated Korey, when recounting the horrific time in his life.
After four years of being locked away, one day his room was left unlocked “accidentally.” He managed to get out of the house and run away to a friend’s house. The next day, social services came and picked him up and put him in foster care. He was in foster care for two days when his grandmother from Texas took him home with her.
“She said she would take care of me, so that’s why I went to Brownwood. I didn’t know anybody. I didn’t have any friends or anything, and that’s when I heard about the Boys and Girls Club. I wasn’t good at sports or anything. My grandma wanted me to have something to do after school. That’s why I started going to the Boys and Girls Club,” said Korey.
From the moment Korey started going to the Boys and Girls Club, he thrived. He took advantage of every opportunity he could, becoming involved in activities at the club, as well as immersing himself into the community on the outside.
One of Korey’s biggest mentors at the club was Danny Willingham. Danny Willingham was the Executive Director of the Boys and Girls Club of Brown County from 1998 to 2018. Korey recalls the time that Danny helped him build a computer from the ground up that he was able to do his homework on throughout the school year. This experience sums up the way it was for Korey at the Boys and Girls Club. He was taught how to make things of his own, and how to make a better life for himself through mentorship.
“It was quite a journey, not having anyone, and then just being a part of this community and growing in it, and working for him. He helped me through a lot. I had brothers and sisters who I didn’t get to see back home after I turned 14. He just helped me through a lot of stuff,” said Korey, in reference to Danny.
When I asked Korey where he thinks he would’ve been after high school if he didn’t have the Boys and Girls Club, he said that recently he had a job working in youth corrections near his home in Colorado, and that working with those children kind of relayed back to his life.
“That’s probably where I would’ve wound up if I hadn’t gone to the Boys and Girls Club. If I hadn’t had that lifestyle change and been introduced to the positivity and the values of the Boys and Girls Club, I probably would’ve been in some juvenile facility,” said Korey.
Korey left a pretty big mark in our small town, but he went out into the world leaving his mark in even greater ways. He graduated from Brownwood High School in May of 2007 and joined the Air Force in 2008. He moved back to Colorado in April of 2010, and still currently lives there with his wife and two young daughters. He also has a 10 -year-old daughter who lives here in Texas with her mother.
Korey switched from the Air Force Reserves to the Army Reserves in 2015, and was also involved in the Boys and Girls Club in Pikes Peak, Colorado for several years. He was Teen Director there from 2016 to 2018. He gave up his position as Teen Director when he was deployed to Iraq in 2018. When he returned home in 2019, he went into the Army Space Program.
When Korey was younger, he had always wanted to be a pilot growing up, but when he became involved with the Boys and Girls Club, he started wanting to be a sixth grade teacher. “I really wanted to teach sixth grade science. It was my passion,” said Korey.
Today, Korey is currently an instructor for the military, and he is still active in the Army Space Reserves, as well. For his civilian job, he’s an instructor for Space and Missile Defense School. He teaches others in the Army about satellites and space. “I’m still a teacher, just not of sixth grade science. Instead, I teach sciency space stuff to adults,” states Korey.
When he was in the Air Force, he was a Loadmaster in the back of a C130. He dropped cargo out of aircrafts at 30,000 feet from the ground. So, although being a pilot was one of the childhood dreams he had prior to his time at the Boys and Girls Club, in some way, shape or form, he achieved all of his childhood ambitions.
The drawing that had been hanging in the Boys and Girls Club for so long did find its way back to Korey. When he told the staff at the club in Pikes Peak that his framed drawing was going to be sent back to him, discussion began about what was going to be done with the piece. Eventually, the artwork was presented to Jrace Rider, who is currently the PR Director of the Boys and Girls Club in Pikes Peak, Colorado, where the drawing will hang in her office.
The same artwork that hung in the Boys and Girls Club of Brown County for so many years will now hang in the Boys and Girls Club in Pikes Peak, Colorado as a true reminder of how far great mentorship can take us. Korey came from a rough background to a community that accepted him with open arms. Through great mentorship he learned how to be a mentor to others.
Korey’s mentor, Danny Willingham, stated, “We got a surprisingly large number of kids who came from backgrounds that were tough, rough, and you know, could possibly have set them up to of been failures in life, but instead they took advantage of things that we offered them there, and had fun, studied, learned, and grew. Korey was one of those.”
I asked Korey, “If you could give advice or wisdom to any teen who has it difficult at home, who isn’t treated right, who doesn’t get shown love or affection, for those who may feel hopeless, what would your message to them be?”
He said, “don’t make someone a priority in your life when you’re only an option in theirs. That’s the Leverett motto my wife and I live by. It applies to family and friends and anyone who would stand in the way of greatness. Even though you may come from a broken home, it’s not all bad. That home made your muscles tough, your willpower strong and your drive for success greater than anyone who dragged you down.”
[Story by Kelly Congdon]
