Jumble Firewood? It’s not so much about the shrink-wrapped bundles of split logs workers cut, package, stock and sell around central Indiana.
While firewood may be the product of Antonio Jackson's latest business venture, the heart of the enterprise lies with the men and women he employs. All have criminal records. Some are registered sex offenders.
No one candy coats their past. It's all there in public court records and newspaper accounts detailing the darkest parts of their lives.
People no one else would offer a second chance to. Convicted felons willing to work hard for a new start in life. People accustomed to being locked up and looked down on, not shored up with a living wage and hope for the future.
People like Kole Gunderman, Dane Dvorak and Daymon Stewart, who seized an opportunity from a man they call Ajay for steady work and decent pay with a dose of understanding and empathy.
People with a past life of crime as the unsteady foundation for what lies ahead.
“All people see is your sheet, your criminal history there on paper,” 50-year-old Stewart said. “So, you don’t have a chance when you get out.” He said offenders benefit from hard work, a forward-looking mission and support from people who have been there.
“Sometimes you make up your own mind to do it for yourself, cut off all those so-called ‘resources’ and get to some hard work," Stewart said. "Why not give someone the opportunity, a chance when no one else will? It all comes back to a made-up mind. You got to make up your own mind to do it for yourself. That’s it.”
Stewart, whose brother was killed in a violent 2008 knife attack in Bloomington, said he first met Jackson in 1992 at a friend’s house. Since then? “Well, you could say we’ve been through hell and high water."
He’s traded angry rampages that got him in trouble with the law starting when he was 15 for days that start at 5 a.m. and a job dismantling discarded medical equipment at Cook. He’s also on call for Jackson when needed for Jumble-related tasks.
Dvorak has worked for Jackson several years. He’s 46, with a criminal history that goes back to a sex offense conviction in Oregon 24 years ago that put him on probation for three years. After, there were methamphetamine charges in Bloomington that landed him in prison in 2018.
He's a habitual traffic offender who likely will never have a valid driver’s license. But he’s certified to operate heavy equipment like the skid steer used in the firewood business. And this fall, he controlled the 80-foot boom lift that moved artists close enough to the Duke Energy substation mural project so they could paint two stories high.
He said steady work with Jackson has given him purpose, and a place, when no one else would. “I think it’s therapeutic when you feel like your back is breaking in four places. And Ajay once told me that if I gave up and left, he would come with the whole crew out here and bring me back.”
Jumble founder's crime-riddled past goes back 40 years
Jackson had been in trouble with the law since he was 13 years old and had no belief in the justice system and its ability to reform. Hope for a better future disappeared when he was a teenager, about the time most people start envisioning the years ahead.
The 53-year-old has a long string of convictions for crimes including multiple counts of robbery and burglary, plus theft, obstruction of justice and criminal gang activity. His sentences ranged from three to 30 years. Judges sent him to state prison six times in the 15-year span from 1993 to 2008.
As far as the state of Indiana was concerned, Jackson was Department of Correction Inmate #871412. “I’ve spent more than half my life in prison,” he said. “I’ve been more incarcerated than free.”
There were long stints in the Monroe County Jail as well, one lasting three years. And in 2005, the prosecutor charged Jackson with being a habitual criminal offender, which was dismissed in a plea agreement.
He wasn’t much for taking advice, not from judges, probation officers, counselors, cellmates, even his grandmother, Pearlie Mae Jackson.
Until the day she died in 2009. He was incarcerated at the time, and the judge in his case denied his request to attend his grandmother’s funeral at Greater Progressive Baptist Church in Fort Wayne.
The only person who had not given up on Jackson was gone. He was angry, resentful, hurt and not allowed to say goodbye.
“My grandmother always told me about God and so I told her I was going to give that a try since nothing else had worked,” Jackson said. “I blamed everything on addiction. Then I decided to take my grandmother at her word.”
She had told him life is a reflection of choices made. “It wasn’t like a light switch, but just something inside of me said I would do stuff different.”
Doing stuff different
He took classes, learned anger management skills and got a bachelor’s degree in business. In 2015, the DOC sent a report to Monroe County documenting Jackson’s progress in prison. That June, he was accepted into Monroe County Re-Entry Court and released from custody.
He lived at a halfway house in Bloomington and worked for a moving company for $10 an hour. He spent hours at the Monroe County Public Library, where employees in the resource center walked him through the necessary steps to start his own business based on what he calls the Three Ps: People, Purpose, Profit.
“I was legally able to start a business. I was certified.” He got a box truck and launched Big Boy’s Moving. Jackson hired convicted felons who had done their time, but struggled to find and keep jobs.
He knew all about that.
Jackson left prison homeless, penniless and with a criminal record that made employers skeptical of hiring him. And when Jackson did land a job, he was fired for taking too much time off for probation appointments and meetings with the re-entry court judge.
“Some people get out of prison and there’s no welcome home, no place to work and no way to get started toward a better life,” Jackson said. “We’ll pick you up, find you a place to stay, get you trained and get you working so you have an income.”
From there, Jackson said, with support from others in the same boat, a stable future can be carved out. It takes time and often includes more than one failed attempt. When people fail or give up, he offers a second, third, fourth chance.
Pandemic challenges business model
When the pandemic struck in 2020, jobs for the once-busy moving company vanished.
Jackson wasn’t sure what to do. Then he got a call from Cook President Pete Yonkman, who had worked with Big Boy’s during Cook’s annual electronics recycling event. “He asked me how the pandemic was affecting us, and I said it was bad. Then we started working for them, a lot.”
Cook was moving operations, equipment and supplies in warehouses during that time and hired Big Boy’s for the work. Jackson said the Cook leader "gave us an opportunity that has helped so many people.”
Yonkman stands behind Jackson's work. “He is really trying to help people that sometimes, as a society, we don’t want to recognize or deal with,” Yonkman said. “The reality is they are in our community and want a pathway forward. It takes someone like Ajay to do this hard work, recognizing the huge obstacles people have to overcome.”
Kevin Trusty at Sunbelt Equipment Rental in Bloomington has been a supporter as well, training and hiring workers like Dvorak. Jackson’s employees have worked for the city during major renovations in Crestmont public housing apartments, moving furniture, caulking windows and doors and painting.
“We hire people and let them know it will get better,” Jackson said. “There is a way.”
A stick on the ground sparks a revelation
A few years ago, the business was on rocky financial ground. Jackson isn’t running a nonprofit agency. His is a money-making venture that pays competitive wages, provides transportation and often rehires workers if they don’t show up or walk off the job.
Like hauling logs and splitting wood, it's hard work. “We’re a family," he said. "You don’t give up on family.”
But his own family, a wife and five kids under the age of 10, need financial support as well. The company profits were supporting business costs, not paying Jackson.
Enter Jumble Firewood, an idea he said came into his head during a prayer walk in the 20 acres of woods behind his northern Monroe County home. “I was heavy hearted, wondering if there is a way to do what we do and help people that’s not such a financial burden.”
He had picked up a stick lying on the ground.
“I heard ‘Pick up the wood’ and then went inside and told my wife God wants us to do wood.”
Firewood.
He called the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, which provided suggestions and information on firewood cutting and state guidelines. He arranged to get cut and downed trees from Bluestone Tree service. He purchased two splitters, a drying kiln and a shrink-wrap machine, then set out to hire the men and women who would become Jumble Firewood's workforce.
They built racks to put outside stores and gas stations to stack their $6.99 bundles. They solicited retail sites, made deliveries and tracked sales.
Jumble Firewood is now sold at 34 locations: 16 in Monroe County, and at gas stations in Gosport, Spencer, Martinsville, Mooresville, Mitchell, Center Point, Terre Haute, Indianapolis, Plainfield and Brownsburg.
Jackson is working with the Department of Correction to establish a Jumble Firewood processing site inside a state prison. Preliminary plans call for 10 splitters to start. Firewood would be sold around the state, and the inmate workers would receive their accumulated pay when they are released from custody to help them start over.
Some of Jackson’s employees take classes and get an arborist certification, which can lead to other employment. Some work at Jumble for a while, save money and move on.
'We take care of people first here ... we’re a family.'
Jackson and longtime employees like Stewart, Gunderman and Dvorak keep workers on track. They act as on-site supervisors as well as laborers splitting and stacking wood, driving trucks and doing on-site landscaping, cleaning, moving and other jobs for Cook.
If someone needs a ride to an appointment or is getting released from prison, drug treatment or a halfway house, it’s often Gunderman who does the driving. He’s got a license. A trip to Evansville and back could take up most of a workday and leave piles of logs uncut.
“It doesn’t really matter,” the 27-year-old said. “Because we take care of people first here. It’s not like a burden. We’re a family.”
Jackson is the patriarch who offers a place and a path for people who turn, finally, away from crime and jail and despair.
People like him.
“A lot of people in my family spent years being afraid of me, not wanting me around,” Jackson said.
Things have changed. “This year, the family Thanksgiving is out here at my house. Everyone’s coming.”
Contact H-T reporter Laura Lane at llane@heraldt.com or 812-318-5967.
