Jax man gets national exposure for helping homeless at beaches.

[sheclown]

Once homeless, Tracy Gebeaux now helps 'residentially challenged' in Jacksonville Beach
Ford Motor Co. to feature him in national TV commercial

Posted: September 19, 2014 - 4:53pm  |  Updated: September 20, 2014 - 12:14am

By Matt Soergel   

JACKSONVILLE BEACH | As he watched the homeless man pass by on the boardwalk with his toes hanging out of his worn-out shoes, Tracy Gebeaux made a bet with God:

If the guy turns around and comes by here again, I'm going to give him my shoes, if my shoes fit him.

He then immediately hoped God wouldn't take him up on his bet.

After all, Gebeaux admits to being a shoe guy. And now that he has a little bit of extra money, he buys nice shoes. In fact, that's what he was doing on the boardwalk: Sitting under a restaurant umbrella, shopping for shoes on his cell phone.

Feeling a little guilty when, sure enough, here came the guy with the holey shoes, wandering back toward Gebeaux.

Dang it.

Turns out they both wore size 10 1/2.

Really, God? I'm really doing this?

And a few minutes later, the homeless man strolled away with a nice pair of Nikes that Gebeaux had stashed in a gym bag in his truck.

That day last year jump-started Gebeaux on a mission to help the homeless of Jacksonville Beach, however he can: McDonald's sausage biscuits on Sunday morning, clothes, backpacks. Sometimes just simple conversation with people too often ignored.

Gebeaux knows what they're going through. During the recession, he lost his home and his job as a construction supervisor, and spent a few awful, lonely nights sleeping on the beach, broke and invisible to the world.

"He was residentially challenged, like we are," pointed out Alphonso Amaro, also known as "Cherokee."

Amaro is a guitar player and carpenter who said he helped build the fishing pier that he now sits under for shade and company.

In the pier's parking lot, he and friend Rodney Tom Boltin came up and gave Gebeaux big hug. "Doggone, man, you've been a blessing to me," Amaro said, pointing to him. "That's a good man, right here."

Gebeaux's outreach to the homeless is called Jax Beach Brother's Keeper, and he's deliberately kept it small. Things get too big, they get slow-moving and cautious.

Working with Harry and Shelly Divido, independent missionaries to the homeless at the beach, he began figuring out the best ways to help.

Gebeaux, Divido said, is proof that anybody can help: "You don't need a big building, a lot of money."

Gebeaux mostly goes on the Jax Beach Brother's Keeper Facebook page to ask friends to donate. And sometimes, buying biscuits at McDonald's on Sunday, people hear what he's doing and come up with $20 here, $5 there, for more food. It's amazing, he says, how many people do want to give.

What he doesn't do is give money — too often, he figures, that goes for booze, and how would that help?

His motivation is his faith, though he doesn't have a whole lot to do with churches.

"I'm a Jesus guy," he said, "not so much a church guy. It's more just loving on people."

Jax Beach Brother's Keeper is a small outreach, but it's about to go national.

Friends, without telling him, nominated him for a contest Ford had, looking for people doing good deeds in the company's trucks.

Gebeaux was one of those chosen: The idea of a once-homeless man now helping those without homes was pretty compelling.

So a camera crew came to the Beaches and followed him around for couple of days.

That wasn't something that came naturally to him.

"It was horrible, dude. I hated it. I couldn't even sleep," he said.

The resulting commercial will air for the first time Saturday during the 2 p.m. broadcast of a Professional Bull Riders competition on WJAX TV-47, and then several times after that.

Gebaux is 42, son of a commercial fisherman. He grew up in Key West, and as a teenager moved to Tybee Island, Ga.

Tattoos cover much of his upper body, including a Jaguars logo on his chest. Yeah, he's a hard-core fan . On his left arm, another illustration tells more about his life.

It's an elaborate work that shows the water that he loves, along with flames that represent the fires of Hell. In the middle is a big cross — which is how, he hopes, he's going to avoid those flames.

He says he has conversations with God all the time, and on his side there's some cussing and some complaining. What kind of a relationship is it anyway, if you don't talk openly about things?

When it comes to the homeless, he thinks all the time about the story of Jesus and the leper. "When's the last time somebody touched him? When's the last time someone recognized him as a human being?"

Chris Larson is one of those who helps out some at Jax Beach Brother's Keeper. He and Gebeaux have been friends since their teenage days on Tybee.

Even then, if Gebeaux had a little spare money, he would buy extra cheeseburgers at McDonald's to give to people who needed them, Larson said.

He described his friend as driven and independent minded. "Organized religion kinds of turns him off, and sometimes Jesus' followers kind of rub him the wrong way."

Larson took his friend in when he was homeless, offered up his sunroom as a place to sleep. That lasted a year while Gebeaux got his life straight.

Four years ago, he took a $10 an hour job at Preferred Roofing, and is now the company's vice president.

"That's what happens when somebody takes a chance on somebody," Gebeaux said.

And that, he figures, is what he's doing for the residentially challenged people he tries to help.

He looks at it this way: "If you're not loving on nobody, you're not living."



Matt Soergel: (904) 359-4082

[IrvAdams]

Inspirational. Someone quietly working for the good. Thanks for this post.