“Serve City is a great place,” said Hood, 50, who replaced Linda Kimble, who served as director until her death in June 2020. “I got to a certain point where I gave all I had to give there.”
So Hood, a pastor for 20 years, has landed at Abilities First, a Middletown-based agency that opened in 1958. He recently was hired as executive director, replacing Jan Rosebrough, 64, the director who died this summer.
During his two years at Serve City, Hood often thought how the lives of the clients could have been different if someone invested in them as children.
“Could we have headed off some of this earlier along?” he asked. “What if there was a support system in place so some of those challenges could have been overcome earlier in life?”
Then Hood’s mind flashed back to a conversation he heard between a homeless client and a social worker in Serve City’s community room. The person told the worker: “You are the mom I always wished I had.”
That had to be rewarding for the woman to hear, but also troubling.
“We are all products of our environment,” Hood said. “Good and bad.”
He took over for an agency that has seen “incredible challenges” the last several years, he said. Abilities First went through a major reconstruction of leadership, then services were interrupted by COVID-19, then the director died.
Hood is confident Abilities First can continue its mission to empower individuals and families living with differing abilities to discover and to fulfill their unique potential.
He has made a point to meet with the entire staff individually. They all speak with the same voice. They all have a connection to Abilities First. They know someone who has received services there. So they stayed. Some for 30 years.
“It’s less about the paycheck and job and more about the mission,” Hood said.
Abilities First has what Hood called “a laser focus.” It concentrates on physical, occupational and speech therapies, early childhood learning center, autism center and a preschool/daycare that intentionally includes children with and without special needs.
Hood and his wife, Julie, high school sweethearts, have been married for 31 years and have four adult children and four grandchildren. They recently bought their first house near the Middletown and Monroe border. A few months later, they had to replace their HVAC system.
Hood, a son of a preacher, had always lived in a house provided by the church.
“Don’t I just call a (church) trustee?” he said with a laugh when asked about home repairs. “Isn’t that how it works?”
When their youngest son graduated from college, David and Julie Hood talked about their next careers. She works in the medical department at Best Point Education & Behavioral Health in Cincinnati.
“We can be anybody we want to be,” he told his wife. “Who do we want to be?”
Then he answered his own question: “Let’s go to the places Jesus would have gone and be with those people Jesus would have gone to.”
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