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Speaker urges local students to make their ‘next right choice’
On July 17, 2009, Nathan Harmon made a choice to get behind the wheel while under the influence of alcohol.
When that choice ultimately took the life of a friend, it changed Harmon’s life as well.
However, as one of several “moments of impact” that Harmon described as shaping a person’s life, the car crash and its aftermath became a turning point, if for no other reason than the choices he’s made in the years since.
In an event sponsored by the Putnam County PIE Coalition, Harmon addressed a group of about 2,000 seventh- through 10th-graders at Greencastle High School’s McAnally Center Tuesday morning. In attendance were students from PIE-member schools Cloverdale, Greencastle, North Putnam and South Putnam as well as Eminence as special guests.
PIE stands for Prevention, Intervention and Education on drugs, alcohol and tobacco.
In welcoming the students to the event, Linda Merkel, who co-chairs the PIE Coalition, credited the PIE student representatives for coming up with the idea for the event. She also thanked the other organizations that funded the event, the Putnam County Sheriff’s Merit Board, Putnam County Youth Development Commission and Putnam County Community Foundation.
Using past hurts in his life as examples, Harmon acknowledged that people cannot always control circumstances such as growing up in poverty, broken homes, abuse or substance problems in their families. However, he repeated a lesson from his own father, whom he acknowledged as a flawed man.
“You will always, for the rest of your life, be a product of what you do,” Harmon said.
With that, he took students on his own journey, from a young honor student with parents he believed to have a perfect marriage to a high school senior from a broken home with drug and alcohol addictions.
He detailed a number of other obstacles he faced along the way, including suicidal thoughts, self harm and an eating disorder. Several times when listing one of these issues, he asked students to raise their hands if they had such experiences or knew someone who had. Each time, many hands went up.
“I hope that everybody who is struggling with an eating disorder will see these hands and know you’re not alone,” he said at one point.
He also spoke of refusing to let others in as he hid his pain with hurtful jokes.
The substance abuse followed him after high school, including a brief stint in the U.S. Army that ended with an honorable discharge from a sympathetic commanding officer.
Then at age 23 came the fateful night that killed his friend. He’d called her to pick him up with no intention of driving, but ultimately got behind the wheel of her car after a night of heavy drinking. They were almost to their destination when she yelled “Tree!”
The next thing he remembered was waking up in the hospital with his mother there and police asking questions.
He was released with a broken foot, but knew worse was to come.
“Nathan, I need to talk to you,” he remembers his mom saying. “Your life is about to change.”
And change it did. He was ultimately sentenced to 15 years in prison for reckless homicide, but not before his friend’s family reached out to him.
“What we’ve decided is that one bad choice shouldn’t ruin two families’ lives,” Harmon recalled them saying. “They asked me not to let Priscilla pass away for nothing.”
He carried that with him to prison. There was a sticker that he put on his mirror in prison that said “change the world.” While he didn’t fully know what that would mean, his perspective began to change as he looked at the little choices he made each day.
“Slow life down and make the next right choice,” he said. “Treat people the next right way.”
That has been his life for the last 13 years, in a nutshell.
Based on a new law in the state of Indiana and showing genuine change, Harmon was released more than 11 years early, and has been speaking to groups — particularly young people — since 2013, becoming the most booked school speaker in the nation in 2017.
He’s also gotten married and started a family. Along the way, that “change the world” sticker has moved with him, through two houses and now on a motorcoach in which the family travels the country.
It’s not that all the negative thoughts that haunted Harmon in his younger days were automatically gone, but he found a key to feeling better about himself through helping others.
“If I want to have real self esteem, it’s what I give away that I get to keep,” Harmon said.
Perhaps one of the most important lessons, Harmon said, was to let people in. He used a ladder to illustrate this point, inviting a pair of Cloverdale students and a pair of teachers down to hold a 12-foot ladder for him.
He climbed, but illustrated how we will slip at times. But, ultimately, by investing in what he calls “vertical relationships” — coaches and mentors — we can make the top.
As the four guests held the ladder steady for him, Harmon was greeted with a round of applause as he stood atop the ladder in the middle of the gym floor — two steps above where the manufacturer recommends that you stop.
All of this, Harmon said, has to do with the small choices made on a daily basis. He reminded his audience that at 15 years old, he didn’t decide to become an alcoholic or drug addict, he just began to compromise.
“Don’t settle for the smallest compromise because one compromise can lead to 10,” Harmon said.
