Daniel P. Finney

dafinney@dmreg.com

Josef Reed bounced between his divorced parents’ homes while he was in middle school and high school.

He logged time in Waukee, Perry and Woodward-Granger high schools. He was a smart kid, excelling in advanced math classes and taking Talented and Gifted courses.

But Josef also was disruptive and caused trouble. He seldom finished his work and fell behind his classmates each year.

“I had a lot of trouble with authority,” he said.

Josef turned 18 in 1995 and dropped out of Woodward-Granger. He said only one teacher — civics instructor Steve Richardson — asked him to reconsider.

“Don’t become the people you can’t stand,” Richardson, a former state lawmaker from Indianola, told him.

But that's eventually who Josef became, traveling a dark road for years before finding peace with the help of friends and a club that reached out to boys wrestling with some of the problems that plagued Josef for much of his life.

'A fast way out'

Alcoholism ran in Josef’s family. He drank and experimented with other drugs, too.

Josef got his high school diploma by taking courses at Des Moines Area Community College, but there was little cause for celebration.

He put siding on housing to make money and lived with a friend in a broken-down trailer that was from a job site.

He drank a lot.

“I needed a fast way out of a bad situation,” Josef said.

He joined the U.S. Navy and eventually was stationed in Florida. The kid who always struggled with authority found that regimented military life suited him.

“It gave me a sense of purpose I never had before,” Josef said. “There is the camaraderie you have. It’s a family.”

Josef worked as an avionics technician. He repaired and installed navigation and sonar systems on Sikorsky SH-60 Seahawk helicopters, the Navy equivalent of the Army’s Black Hawks.

'You could do this'

He discovered his talent for engineering. His girlfriend at the time, who eventually became his wife, did not want to be married to a military man.

She sent him catalogs for the University of Central Florida. She circled courses and majors in the books.

“She kept saying, ‘You could do this,’” Josef said.

So he did, earning a degree in electrical engineering from Central Florida in 2005. He left the Navy and worked on the space shuttle program until it shut down.

Then Josef worked as a contractor for companies that do business with the military: Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and others.

Josef was a savant in his work. The rest of his life was a mess. His wife eventually became his ex-wife.

“It was a typical military marriage,” Josef said. “We married too young, and it didn’t work out.”

Josef still drank to excess. He sought help for alcoholism while still in the Navy. But a squadron councilor told him admitting the problem would be "detrimental to his career."

“I knew I had a problem with alcoholism,” Josef said.

Becoming what he hates most

Leaving the Navy didn’t help his drinking. Josef kept it together at work, but he lost many nights to booze.

He often drank with a college buddy. The friend got picked up on his third or fourth drunk driving charge in 2008.

Josef didn’t see him until a year and a half later, while on a contract job at General Electric. His friend was sober, clear-eyed and physically fit. The friends discussed sobriety, but Josef wasn’t ready to make any big changes.

Several months later, Josef woke up one morning and discovered that a road rash covered his body, one of his wrists fell limp and was badly bruised. He hurt all over.

He pieced together what happened through the haze of a blackout drunk. He recalled an angry exchange with his girlfriend at the time.

She tried to leave. He grabbed the handle of her car door. She ran over him and dragged him down the street for a block.

“I realized I had become the thing I hated most,” Josef said. “This was the exact opposite thing I wanted when I left home.”

Josef called his sober friend, who arranged for him to get into an in-patient treatment clinic in Florida.

In July 2015, Josef was five years sober and had finished a contract job in Tulsa, Okla. He lived alone in a small apartment and had no friends in the city.

“I realized I didn’t know what I was gonna do with my life, and I felt exactly like I did before I left Iowa,” Josef said.

So he moved back to Iowa and kept busy with contract work. But he wanted something more.

Reconnecting with his roots

Josef reconnected with a classmate from Waukee High School, Colin Broderick. The two were troublemakers in their youth, but both had cleaned up their lives by age 38.

Colin ran a mixed-martial arts club for youths called Team Broderick. He trained the boys in jujitsu and wrestling.

The club serves nearly 30 boys ages 5 and older. Some are hard luck cases like Colin and Josef back in the day.

“There’s nobody on this team by accident,” Colin said. “Everybody comes to us for a different reason.”

Last year, the team won a championship in Kansas City, Mo. They had a strong showing at meets in Minneapolis, St. Louis and Dallas.

The club focuses on good citizenship. Each practice includes time for the boys to share what good deeds they’ve done between meetings.



A new familyThe club takes camping trips and go to Iowa Cubs games.

It’s a tight group. A 6-year-old on the team asked a high school sophomore on the team to go to his birthday party. And the older boy showed up.

One of the young grapplers recently posted on Facebook: “Without them, I wouldn’t know who to call family.”

Team Broderick was exactly what Josef was looking for. Colin is the trainer. Josef handles the business end of things. He’s getting the club certified as a non-profit.

Josef raises money. He does public relations. He arranges travel.

And he marvels at how these boys set goals and achieve them, some against long odds.

Josef sees a lot of himself in these boys.

There was no such club for him when he was the age of these kids. Josef is thrilled to be a part of it now.

The team motto is: “Get Your Mind Right.”

That fits Josef just fine. He took the long way around to get his mind right, but these boys are helping him keep it there.

Daniel P. Finney, the Register's Metro Voice columnist, is a Drake University alumnus who grew up in Winterset and east Des Moines. Reach him at 515-284-8144 or dafinney@dmreg.com. Twitter: @newsmanone.