The Success Equation
Paul Woods always wanted to make something of himself, but didn’t know how. Once he landed in a stable home, success was his for the taking.
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aul Woods ’14 knew growing up that he had potential, but he did not know how to fulfill it. As a boy, he lived in a small rural farming town in Illinois with his parents and three siblings. “I grew up in a trailer park where my backyard was literally a cornfield, which was great for playing hide and seek.” When he was 13, his parents divorced. Then his mother had met a man on the internet. The man lived in Austin, Pa., 50 miles southeast of Bradford and home to 164 families and the state’s smallest school district. The family packed everything they owned in a rented Suburban and met his stepfather for the first time in a Sheetz parking lot. There were 11 students in Woods’s new freshman class. After accidentally breaking a window in their trailer in Austin, Woods and his family moved to a small, subsidized house in Port Allegany, Pa. He started high school there in the middle of the year and struggled to make friends and find his place in his fourth school district in two years. Athletics became his means to making friends. By sophomore year, Woods had joined the track, wrestling and football teams. He enjoyed participating in the sports, but struggled to purchase the proper equipment. However, a friend of his who worked for a local business, Josh Roach, injured himself lifting weights and mentioned to the business owner that Woods would like to sub in and earn some money toward purchasing new football cleats. The business owner was Scott Moses, who had grown up poor himself, had put himself through college and been a banker before buying an independent furniture store where he regularly employed a few young men to help move and deliver furniture. After just two weeks of working for the store, Woods learned that his family had decided to move back to Austin after its home in Port Allegany was deemed unlivable. Woods argued with his mother, and the decision was made that Woods would not make the trip. “I was desperately looking for a place to stay during the last few weeks of my sophomore year, but didn’t even consider asking the Moseses, whom I barely knew at that time,” Woods said. Roach approached Scott Moses and his then-wife, Karen, and told them about Woods’s situation. At first, Scott Moses was against the idea of taking 8
PORTRAITS
Woods in. His own children were 7 and 11 at the time. However, he and his wife had considered taking in a child before, and between Josh, his brother, Matt, who was also a friend of Woods’s, and Karen, they convinced Scott to open his home for at least a trial period. For Karen Moses, it was personal; she was adopted herself and had long wanted to help a child who needed it. It did not take too long before Scott Moses acquiesced to trying the arrangement on a trial basis. Karen Moses and Woods went to his former home and gathered his things – all of which fit in one plastic tote. “Whether or not he stays, he needs some clothes,” Scott said and suggested Karen take him shopWoods at his 2014 ping. “I sympathized. I know what Pitt-Bradford it was like to have crappy clothes graduation (top) and wear hand-me-downs.” and with former Woods had moved in with only dean of students three days left of his 10thK. James Evans. grade year — a year mostly spent sleeping through classes with more than 40 unexcused absences. “I had no external or internal motivation at that time,” he said. “I just did enough to stay eligible for the sports I played.” He spent the first summer adjusting to the Moseses’ rules — having a curfew, eating dinner as a family, not texting at the table, going to bed and not playing video games all night. “There were a lot of new experiences for me when I moved into the Moseses’ home,” he said. “They took me on a vacation, which was the first vacation I had ever been on.” However, the real test came at the end of the summer and into the start of his junior year of high school. The Moseses explained that in the coming school year, they expected Woods to go to school, do his homework and make an effort. “We did not expect perfect attendance or a perfect GPA; we just wanted Paul to put in a real effort and do his best,” fall/winter 2018
