Jim Daly thinks it’s a miracle he is the new CEO of Focus on the Family instead of being dead, insane, or in jail.
“When they asked me to consider accepting the position of president of Focus on the Family, I thought, ‘You’ve got the wrong guy. There’s been a mistake,'” said Daly, an affable former salesman who succeeded James Dobson in 2005.
Daly’s story of how he rose out of his calamity-filled childhood, found in the new book Finding Home: An Imperfect Path to Faith and Family, is a reminder to youth workers never to underestimate kids who look like losers.
Father Didn’t Know Best
Daly’s parents met at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Jim was the youngest of five children who experienced a few years of nearly normal family life before their father resumed drinking and gambling. Daly’s mother divorced his father when Daly was 5.
When she remarried, she unfortunately picked a tyrant who adored her but hated kids. (Daly’s two brothers, two sisters and he called him “Hank the Tank.”) By now, Mom had beaten the bottle; but she couldn’t beat colon cancer. She died when he was 9, and Hank the
Tank skipped town with everything the children owned.
Then things got really weird.
With no known relatives to turn to, the Daly kids, minus the oldest brother who joined the Navy, moved in with strange family named the Riels. The Riels lived down a dirt road in the Mojave Desert, in a warren of shacks painted—no lie—the color of Pepto-Bismol. For a year, Daly, 10, lived a “Twilight Zone” existence.
“I remember sitting on the dirt road and crying, ‘God, are You there?’” Daly said.
Out of the blue, an unlikely savior showed up: Daly’s delinquent father. His drinking was under control enough that Daly and his youngest sister moved in with him. (The oldest daughter was now married, and the second son was off on his own.) Daly was ecstatic.
“I had a dad-shaped hole in my heart, like every other boy in the planet. …” he writes. “Most of all, I needed someone to believe in me.”
But it didn’t last. The drunken rages returned, and 12-year-old Daly had to tell his father he couldn’t live with him. Dad disappeared again. Within a year, he was found dead in an abandoned warehouse, frozen to death.
All Things Possible
“By the time I was in high school, I began to wonder if there were good guys in the world,” writes Daly, who moved in with a brother.
A football coach named Paul Moro, known as “Coach Mo,” entered the scene in the nick of time. Coach Mo reached out to the angry teenager and pushed him to excel. On a team trip to a football camp run by the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Daly committed his life to Christ. He still had a rocky road ahead, but now he had a guide.
Without youth workers in the forms of his coach and the FCA staff, Daly said he can only guess where he might have ended up. He quoted Matthew 19:26: “With God all things are possible” (NIV).
“I know,” he said. “I’m living proof.”
Daly says he may have a different style from Dobson; but he’s committed to the core ideals of Focus, which just celebrated its 30th anniversary. And he’s committed to joining the ministry to reach and help families for the next 30 years.
Anita Palmer is YouthWorker Journal’s Senior Copy editor and a freelance writer from San Diego, California
