Meet Jack, Faithfully Demonstrating Perseverance to All He Meets

Every Sunday, Mass ends exactly the same. Jack Archer, a member at St. Bernadette in Westlake, knows the words by heart, but he waits for them anew each time. “’Go forth and spread the Gospel with your lives,’ the deacon says,” Jack recalls with a smile.  

For Jack, those words are more than liturgy or ritual. They are a real invitation by God to join Him in work that’s beautiful, unexpected and challenging. When the deacon repeats those words each week, it’s the families at The Hope Center for Refugees and Immigrants that flood Jack’s mind.

A trained educator whose career spanned from the classroom to Connecticut and Washington state legislatures working on education policy, Jack is a man familiar with the power of persistent hope. It’s a trait he readily recognizes in the lives of the adult and youth students at The Hope Center.

“What I’ve found here are ordinary moms, dads and kids, many of whom face difficulties given their backgrounds and what they’ve overcome, but they have faith and perseverance,” says Jack, who remembers one Iraqi man he tutored in preparation for the U.S. citizenship test. The two met regularly for months, during which Jack learned that his student was also an accomplished artist in Iraq.

“He was a hard-working, smart man, but each time he took the test, I think his nerves got the better of him.” The student failed the test twice. “I felt dejected for his sake!” Jack recalls, “But he didn’t quit. He came back and we kept studying. I had such admiration for him sticking with it despite those disappointments.”  The Iraqi man passed his citizenship test on the third attempt, thanks, in part, to Jack’s willingness to spread the Gospel with his life.

Jack credits the The Hope Center for helping him live out his faith in new ways in retirement, but it’s wife, Jane, also a volunteer with BHITC, who deserves the credit for really getting the ball rolling. Shortly after moving to Cleveland in 2016 and while they waited at their new home in Fairview Park for a delayed moving truck to arrive with all their possessions, Jane decided to take a walk around their new neighborhood.

“Jane wandered into Common Threads on that walk and bought some things on her first visit.” When she got home, she handed Jack literature about Building Hope in the City that was given to Jane at the check-out register. The rest is history. “Looking back, that walk to Common Threads was definitely a ‘God-thing,’” he says.

Today, Jack has become what Hope Center staff call a “utility player” – someone with enough life and Center experience that they can handle a variety of volunteer assignments, who are willing to jump in and work alongside students of any age or background. Such “utility players” are invaluable as the numbers of newly-arriving refugee families coming to the Center grows each month.

“Jack’s worth his weight in gold to us,” says Laurie Kubiak, Education Manager at The Hope Center, who first met Jack six years ago when he started volunteering. “Faithful, consistent, patient presence changes things and people over time. That’s the story of Jack’s impact here in a nutshell!”