John Chamness: Salvation Army leader in Hawaii helps rebuild lives

Helping the needy and people struggling with addiction has been part of John Chamness’ life even before it became his career, and that of his wife, Lani.

The leader of the Salvation Army’s Hawaiian & Pacific Islands Division, now 52, also is the son and grandson of ministers. His father felt it was his call to reclaim wayward souls in need of work and direction away from substance abuse, so often at the core of their misfortune.

Chamness will mark 27 years with the 150-year-old faith-based organization in June, 17 of those in Hawaii. And as working with the troubled is central to the Salvation Army’s ministry, he is immersed in the historical trivia.

“William Booth, our founder, said, ‘Go for souls and go for the worst.’ So it’s always been a part of the Salvation Army to go out and look for those who, for the most part, the rest of society has cast aside.

“The term ‘falling off the wagon’ — that’s a term that goes back to the old days of the Salvation Army, where we’d actually go out with these wagons and go combing the streets, looking for the alcoholic, looking for the drunkard on the street,” he added. “And we put them on the wagon and as they would go along, they would fall off the wagon occasionally.

“It’s certainly a big part of what the Salvation Army has done, for decades.”

Currently Chamness and his crew have just finished the drive to collect and distribute Christmas gifts to client families, an annual project. But there are new initiatives as well.

The one launched since the Chamness family moved back to Hawaii four years ago is the Pathway of Hope program, aimed at helping clients maintain success and avoid relapse. A total of 31 families — Salvation Army graduates — have been paired with a case manager, or “life coach,” to help them get connected to a job and support system.

The military motif of the organization dates to its origins, said Chamness, who holds the rank of major.

“I think it was a brilliant way of organizing a group of people around a common cause,” he said. “As a soldier, you’re in a battle against wrong and against evil and things that are there to harm people. We’re really in a fight for good, to encourage people and help people see that there’s something better.”

QUESTION: How did you get into this work?

ANSWER: My father and grandfather were Presbyterian pastors. When I was about 21 or 22 years old, that’s when I became a Christian, and I was really involved in a Presbyterian church in Seattle.

Q: So, you became a Christian at 22, and you were a preacher’s kid and grandkid?

A: (Laughs.) Exactly! That’s true with a lot of pastors’ children, at least for myself. I really felt a call to ministry, so I went and met with one of the pastors there. After spending some time with him, I really didn’t get a lot of good direction.

At the same time I was working for an electrical contractor in Seattle. … There was a young gal there, and she went to the Salvation Army. She said, “Hey, do you want to come to the Salvation Army? Come to my church!” And I go, “Um, sure.” She said, “You knew it was a church, right?” And I said, “Yeah, I knew it was a church.”

I had no idea. All I knew was thrift stores and Christmas kettles. That was really my only exposure to the Salvation Army up until that point.

I went to the Salvation Army and what I saw that was different there was that it was a church that actually got out and did something. It wasn’t just about coming in and sitting in a pew and listening to a message and singing some songs. It was actually about getting up out of that pew — that was the most important thing — and going out and helping others.

Q: And that appealed to you?

A: Oh, yeah. That resonated with me. As a young adult, I really wanted to be involved and do something to make my world better. …

Q: Has the work of the Salvation Army changed over time?

A: I think if any organization doesn’t evolve with what’s going on in society, it will soon die. The Salvation Army’s 150 years old, since 1865. …

Over the decades the Salvation Army’s had to evolve to meet whatever rising need was in a culture.

Certainly here in Hawaii, one of the biggest issues that we face as a culture, as a community is … we see homelessness everywhere, but that’s just the result of some deeper issues. And some of those deeper issues would be addictions, specifically drug and alcohol addictions.

Unfortunately, the state of Hawaii, I think we’re No. 1 in the nation in terms of meth use per capita. That’s not a great statistic. That’s the one place you don’t want to be No. 1.

And as a result of addictions, a result of poverty, some of that is what we’re seeing right now, evidenced in the homeless camps of Kakaako, and the homeless camps in other places around our island.

Q: Does the Salvation Army involve itself in the causes of that?

A: We’re probably the largest provider of drug and alcohol treatment here on Oahu. And we have three amazing facilities.

Family Treatment Services down in Kaimuki that serves mom and baby, it’s the only program like it in the state of Hawaii, where a judge will say to mom, “If you want to keep your baby, instead of going to prison, I’m going to send you to the Salvation Army.”

And you can get help with your drug addiction, you can give birth to your baby there, and then you can get help to learn how to be a mom. That’s what we do down in Kaimuki, where we really intervene in a young woman’s life, and we help her to really deal with many of the issues that have led to her addiction.

Oftentimes with women, it’s tied back to abuse by a family member, by a neighbor, by somebody in their community who abused them, either sexually or physically, or some sort. So really, they’re dealing with PTSDs.

We see that certainly with people in the military, but it’s also something that we see in people who have been abused — this trauma that has taken place in their life, and they don’t know how to deal with it so they self-medicate, or they try to cover it up with alcohol or drugs. …

There’s Addiction Treatment Services up on the Pali; it serves about 1,400 men and women every year, just through that one program. …

And then just down the street (from here), Nimitz, we have our Adult Rehabilitation Center — that’s the one that runs all the thrift stores on Oahu. And those thrift stores fund the addiction treatment programs. So these men actually go through work therapy.

You know, when I was growing up, my dad said, “The best way to really help a man regain his dignity in life is, you put some money in his pocket, give him a job and give him a place to stay.”

He would always go out and bring home these guys, these labor-ready guys, or these guys out of prison, kind of just needing to get a start in life.

We had a small farm, and he would always put me in charge of these guys who were coming to work on our farm. Here I am, a 12- or 13-, 14-year-old kid with a couple of guys right off the street.

But it taught me some really important lessons about really how to treat people right and how to help people have that dignity restored.

Q: Were you intimidated by that, in some way?

A: You know, … I look back on it now,and I say, “That was really weird. I don’t know if I could do that with my son.” But back then, that was just the way things were, growing up in our house. …

So that’s kind of what we do at the Adult Rehabilitation Center, the ARC, the program that runs the thrift stores. These guys, many of them, have destroyed their lives through drugs and alcohol, through living on the streets, being homeless. And we begin to restore them.

We bring them in, we put some new clothes on their backs, we give them a nice warm shower, we put some food in their stomach. We give them a job working down in the warehouse.

Q: What kind of feedback do you get from them?

A: I think the majority of guys will say, “You saved my life. If it hadn’t been for the Salvation Army, I’d be dead on the streets right now.”

The reality is that for most homeless people who are dealing with really strong addictions, their life spans are often much shorter than the normal person, for a variety of reasons. …

Q: Would you say that most people are reclaimable?

A: I’m an optimist. I think everybody’s reclaimable.

And I’ve seen it — I’ve seen some very difficult, very hard people. And oftentimes, for many people it takes multiple times going through a treatment program before it finally hits them that “if I’m going to get better, I’ve got to make some changes in my life.”

Sometimes after they’ve been there a few weeks, they start feeling better. It’s the first time they’ve been sober in years, and they’ve had some good food in their bellies and they start to feel better, they start to feel confident. And they say, “I can do this,” and go back on the streets.

A couple months later, we’ll see them right back. Or maybe it’s a couple years.

But I’ve seen some really difficult people who have had some very difficult lives just transformed by the work of the Salvation Army.

Q: Is there something special about Christmas for the Salvation Army? I mean, we don’t associate you with Easter as much.

A: Yes, it’s Christmas, and I think it has a lot to do with the bell ringers, who really have been out on the streets since 1892 or 1894 …

Here’s a great way that everybody in the community can really contribute to helping others. Something I hear all the time when I’m standing at a kettle, people will come up and say, “Gosh, I only have a couple of pennies, or I only have some loose change in my pocket — I’m sorry, I wish I had more to give.”

But what they don’t realize is that loose change really adds up and makes a difference. It represents one third of the money raised in every kettle. We’re to raise $1 million this year, so $300,000 of the money that we’re racing over this Christmas season is in loose change.

And so what we like to say is, “Change in causes change to come out, in the lives that we work with.”