Yesterday the President of the United States pardoned my friend Jon Ponder, the founder and CEO of Hope for Prisoners in Las Vegas. With a mind-boggling singleness of purpose, Jon built a reentry program for people exiting the judicial system, helping them reclaim their values and lives, and becoming a model for other prisoners coming out of that system and other reentry programs around the country. I’ve written often in these messages about Jon and H4P and am thrilled that his record has been wiped clean. He earned it, and he deserves this. Jon’s story is both amazing and inspiring – to go from the depths of despair to a national role model is the thing that stories are made of; to take a single thought and build it into such a successful program shows what people are capable of, even when it’s least expected; and to turn his own life around and then those of so many others is an incredible testament to the power of faith and change. Hard work is indeed its own reward and this pardon is the icing on the cake: it will further encourage other men and women seeking to rebuild their lives, their families and their communities. In these crazy times we all need some good news – Jon Ponder is that story today.
Jodi Picoult (born 1966): American Author
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