“I was able to be a kid at Methodist Home.”
I went to the Methodist [Children’s] Home because my mom had a lot of demons and a lot of struggles. She was an addict. She was an alcoholic. She had a lot of mental illness. And then my dad had a lot of fear that I was going to follow her path, and he didn’t feel like he had the environment or the strength or the ability to give me everything I needed to be successful. He and my stepmom were not in the best health.
My dad drove me up. My stepmom and my little brother stayed at home and he dropped me off at Methodist Home and that really was the start of second chapter of my life. Looking back now, I did not understand it at 16. At 16, I was angry. I was very upset. Now, being a parent, I can see how if you’ve got all these other outside factors and this fear of, ‘OK, you might become like me, or you might become like your mom, and I don’t know how to give you the tools in your tool belt to be the best person you can be, I need to put you in an environment that will.’ And that’s what the Methodist Home was. And I will say, to this day, it was the best decision he ever made. I will tell him that to his face multiple times. I was able to be a kid at Methodist Home.
I think a misconception of Methodist Home is that when you’re 18, they don’t just say, ‘OK. You’re done.’ I got married there. It’s been a big part of my life. Dr. Dan Jackson, who was the head of the education program, saw something in me and basically took me under his wing. I remember him giving me financial textbooks. It was like he saw the numbers person in me and would give me extra homework and would work with me to make sure I didn’t fall behind. He became like a father to me. He and his wife, Sue, they were just amazing. He walked me down the aisle at my wedding. They’re still part of my life.
It was the best two years of my life. I could just be me. I only had to worry about me. I didn’t have to worry about my mom. I didn’t have to worry about my dad. I didn’t have to worry about my stepmom. I didn’t have all this added pressure of these expectations, of these things that I was trying to live up to, that I was trying to not be, that I was trying to overcome. Now that I’m a parent, I see my fears and I try really hard not to place them on my children. I think that my parents were placing their fears and their insecurities on me. And by going to Methodist Home, I had these adults, I had these people that were removed from the situation. They just saw me. They saw my needs, my wants, my curiosities, and they fed them. It literally made me who I am today.
When she was 16 years old, Marissa Stovall moved from her home in Austin to the Methodist Children’s Home on Herring Avenue in Waco. She attended her junior year of high school at the on-campus school and her senior year at A.J. Moore Academy in the Waco Independent School District. She then went on to earn two associate’s degrees from McLennan Community College and a bachelor’s in accounting from Baylor University. Stovall is now 41. She and her husband Scott are both CPAs and parents to two daughters: Caroline, 8; and Lillian, 6.
