A moment to celebrate: Haywood’s Recovery Court graduates second participant
Mark Beam stands up in front of the crowd with Program Coordinator Amanda Seay. Kyle Perrotti photo
Last Friday wasn’t Mark Beam’s first time facing a judge at the defendant’s table in Haywood County District Court, but it seems like it may have been the last.
Beam’s defense attorney, Jake Phelps, stood to address District Court Judge Monica Leslie. Phelps’ voice wavered as he evoked his client’s case number, and many in the gallery and the jury box wiped away tears.
“Your honor,” Phelps began. “I will make a motion on Mr. Beam’s behalf asking to withdraw his guilty plea.”
“The court will certainly allow the withdrawal of the plea,” Leslie said proudly.
A minute later, the charges entered against Beam, who was not so long ago on the verge of finding himself in prison as a habitual felon, were dismissed, and everyone rose to their feet to applaud Beam, the man of the hour. He was free to go on his way, a new man with a renewed sense of purpose.
The dismissal of the charges and the second chance Beam will now enjoy are possible because of Haywood County’s recovery court pilot program, which allows defendants who qualify to enter a special plea and enter into a program that offers a holistic approach to addiction recovery.
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Through the program, participants have access to health care, employment and housing assistance. However, they are also subject to intense accountability. Participants go in front of a judge once every two weeks, and they also take drug tests and see a probation officer several times every week. During the early phases, they also submit to electronic monitoring. While slip-ups, even relapses, are expected, if someone isn’t committed to the program, a judge can send them back to regular court and jail becomes an immediate threat, if not an inevitability.
It took Beam 20 months to complete the program. While in the past, justice for Beam involved incarceration and restitution payments, now justice looks entirely different. It looks like freedom.
Beam’s graduation marked the second successful completion of the county’s program. The two judges who have presided over recovery court are Roy Wijewickrama, the former chief District Court judge who was last month appointed to Superior Court by Gov. Roy Cooper, and Leslie. Both were on-hand Friday, as were family and friends of Beam, Sheriff Bill Wilke, various court personnel and other program participants.
The atmosphere was festive, a stark contrast from what most people see when they enter a Haywood County courtroom. Christmas stockings and giftbags were prepared for each participant, A full spread of both hot and cold options sat up near the jury box, and, of course, there was cake.
Beam’s story is — beyond the fact that he beat an addiction that’d gripped him for over two decades — incredible. People in Waynesville may recognize him from a job he held at Hardee’s, where he worked over 40 hours per week making biscuits early in the morning. He held this job throughout active addiction, as well as recovery. In fact, from time to time, he was known to bring biscuits into recovery court for everyone to enjoy.
During their speeches, Wijewickrama and Leslie both noted that the change in Beam was remarkable. When he used to stand in front of them, he was meek and couldn’t look anyone in the eyes. He was turned “inward,” as Leslie put it.
Beam was a frequent flyer in District Court, where over the years he faced a whole host of charges and convictions for crimes related to his addiction to methamphetamine.
“Mark really embraced this program and really took it to heart, did all of the treatment that we asked, really participated,” Leslie said.
And it wasn’t easy. Beam endured a relapse at one point, and perhaps most challenging, he suffered a severe heart attack that required a hospital stay and the installation of a pacemaker. Committed to his recovery, Beam refused pain medication throughout his time in the hospital.
“That’s how strong this man is,” Leslie said. “I admire him so much, and I’m so grateful to know you, Mark, and I’m so thankful you’re here with us still, and that you’re just doing life on your terms. We’re just super proud of you today.”
During his heart attack recovery, Beam lost his house, and although he was able to find a new place, fate saw fit to test him further as the flooding caused by Hurricane Helene in September left him homeless again. However, thanks to the people working hard in the recovery court and Haywood County nonprofit Mountain Projects, before long, he again was placed in a safe house.
“I wasn’t even expecting it,” he said. “And now I got a really nice place. I’m just on cloud nine. I have everything I want, things I don’t even need. I don’t even think about it.”
During his brief speech, Beam also highlighted another recent struggle.
“A few months ago, I caught COVID, got pneumonia,” he said. “I died during my heart attack, and I felt like I died again.”
Beam enjoys a moment with his girlfriend, Jennifer Whitlow, and his grandson. Kyle Perrotti photo
Phelps also spoke during the graduation ceremony. While he grinned and laughed throughout most of his brief remarks, he also became emotional when considering just how far Beam had come. Phelps told a story that he thought demonstrated who Beam is and the resolve he’s shown — resolve that was necessary to finish the program. The story began after Beam had relapsed. He’d gotten back on the right track and tested clean when he went before Wijewickrama. As he tends to do from the bench, Wijewickrama had a question for the man standing before him. In this case, he asked Beam how he got back on the right track.
Phelps said Beam pounded his fist on the defendant’s table.
“He said ‘because I refuse to contribute to my own demise,’” Phelps recalled.
“I couldn’t be more proud, more honored, to be sitting next to you at this time,” Phelps added, addressing Beam directly.
The keynote speaker at the graduation was Kevin Rumley, the coordinator of the veterans treatment court in Buncombe County. Rumley told his own recovery story to illustrate how addiction works physiologically. In his case, Rumley, a Marine Corps veteran, was severely wounded during a deployment to Iraq. From the “warm hug from God” of that morphine shot he received alongside that road near the Syrian border to his continuous opioid drip during his next year and a half in the hospital, he was hooked, and that opioid addiction would dominate his life for years.
Like so many others in the room, as Rumley’s addiction progressed, he hit rock bottom. At that point, he entered recovery and considers himself fortunate to continue down the right path. But Rumley was clear that it hasn’t always been easy and won’t always be easy. Hardship will create stress, which will create a desire to escape. It’s during those times that fortitude is a must. It’s the strength gained through recovery that can get a person through.
“What recovery gave me was the ability to pick up the phone, call my doctor, call my support network, and say I am not doing OK,” Rumley said.
“It’s not what happens to us, but how we choose to respond,” he later added. “I have no doubt, Mark, that you are going to respond with wisdom and compassion and love.”
Despite Rumley’s candor in front of the happy crowd, he was too humble to talk about his own role in getting Haywood County’s recovery court off the ground. Wijewickrama told The Smoky Mountain News that Rumley was crucial in using his own experiences to get the personnel up to speed to launch the recovery court in Haywood. In addition to consulting with Rumley and other experts, Wijewickrama, Leslie and Seay each have had to do hundreds of hours of initial training and continuing education.
“We got so much information from other people who’d been doing it a while that our heads hurt,” Seay said in an SMN story that ran last year. “We’ve been able to implement different things we’ve learned from others; we’ve tweaked our guidelines and expectations a bit.”
Because Wijewickrama is now a sitting Superior Court judge, District Court Judge Justin Greene, who has about a year on the bench, will take on the role with the recovery court alongside Leslie. Wijewickrama told SMN that while there have been challenges and not everyone has been able to stick with the program, when it works, it makes the effort worth it.
“To watch lives being transformed and to be a part of that has been the most fulfilling thing I’ve done professionally,” he said.
The funding for the two-year program came from the state, but now that the pilot period is about over, money — in the neighborhood of a quarter-million dollars per year — will have to come from county government, whether that’s built into the budget or it comes from grants. Wijewickrama said he’s a believer in the program, especially after seeing two graduations, two lives saved. But beyond understanding the moral imperative of saving people who are willing to put in the work, it takes people out of the already burdened justice system.
“We’re trying to stop that revolving door,” Wijewickrama said, adding that breaking the generational cycle of addiction likely prevents future generations from facing the same fate.
Beam is only the latest benefactor from this overall paradigm shift that has been seen across the country for decades but is now occurring in Haywood County. He is certain that were it not for the program, he’d be in prison at best, although he considers it more likely that he’d already be dead.
“The only thing I ever looked forward to was more drugs,” he said.
But things changed thanks to his hard work, and, of course, he had help along the way from his friends in the program. In recent years, it’s become common wisdom that the opposite of addiction is connection, and through the program, Beam was able to connect with others dealing with the same issues — that connection helped cultivate a sense of self-worth among the entire group.
In addition, Beam had support along the way from his girlfriend, Jennifer Whitlow. Beam had long known Whitlow, his sister’s longtime best friend. As he entered recovery and needed a stable place to stay, Whitlow opened up her home, and before long, the two were romantically involved. She said that prior to him starting the program, she wouldn’t have imagined he’d ever be in active recovery.
“I am very proud of him. I don’t see him going back. I see him being one of the ones who makes it,” she said. “Two years ago when he came to me, I did not see that.”
“Some people need this God; some people need this program,” she added.
Also present at the graduation alongside Whitlow was Beam’s grandson, who Beam said was one of his greatest inspirations. Accountability is more front of mind when you know the next generation is watching and learning.
“I want to see him grow up,” Beam said.
Those interpersonal connections, the realization that he was capable of and deserved meaningful relationships, changed Beam. While he used to struggle with eye contact and felt like he didn’t deserve happiness, much less recovery, things have changed. Several speakers at his graduation called him an inspiration.
“He’s been a role model to so many people,” Seay said.
Following the ceremony, when asked how it felt to be considered a role model after all he’d been through, Beam chuckled and admitted that could take some getting used to, but it’s also something he’s proud of. In fact, his next step may be to become a peer support specialist, a role that will bring him into contact with people hoping to kick their own addictions. It’s his leadership, born of his newfound sense of self-worth, that may bring another soul out of the darkness.
“I think that’d be great,” he said. “If I believe I can help anyone else, I want to do it.”
