Who is this Guy? a.k.a “The Bio”

Jay Forde: it’s all relative Blog & Magazine covers conservative stories and perspectives with a fresh perspective using humor, heart, and straight talk.

Jay Forde is a husband and father of two who enjoys speaking, writing and commenting on family values, technology and conservative politics. He lives with his family in the Pacific Northwest. He is active in his community as a volunteer when he is not busy running JF Designs, his creative technology and consulting business. You can follow him on Facebook and Twitter

The longer version goes like this…

Born in 1967, to musicians who travelled the 60′s lounge circuit, I guess the public space has always been home to me.  Las Vegas, Nevada was my home for the growing up years. Most of the classic original Vegas casinos were still standing when I was running around the then-empty deserts chasing lizards.

It was 1988. I was a 17 year old with a depressed outlook in life. A divorced home, and other factors led me to choose anger and sadness as a vehicle to express myself. After a failed suicide attempt, I was offered the chance to see Love All People perform at a church concert. That night righted my course. Who was Love All People?

In 1988 I joined a music academy called Love All People. This school was special. It was founded by a man who had decided to share his life of music, talent, and love with a bunch of teens that society had given up on. The founder’s name was Prentice Minner.

In 1979, Prentice Minner was a musical celebrity who sang and performed in the same circles as Sammy Davis Jr., Lou Rawls, MIlton Berle, and many others. Today’s generation has never heard of them. Their loss. Prentice and his band director, John Lerner,  spent many years creating original music that they performed on countless stages from Las Vegas to the Catsklill Mountain Resorts of New York. Several records of successful music landed them a spot on Billboard’s top 100. Then one day Prentice received a phone call that would change his life forever. This resulted in the changing of countless lives thereafter.

A friend of Prentice’s reached out to him and requested that he speak with a young teen who had attempted suicide. She had a boyfriend who was a Las Vegas gang leader. In short, Prentice was able to offer a greatly needed compassion to the teen. He then also turned his attention to the gang leader in an attempt to steer his life back to safety.

Love All People was born. Over the next 15 years, Prentice welcomed over 300 wayward teens through his home. Giving up a successful career in show business, he, his band director, and many others who were part of the performing group, devoted their lives to helping teens that suffered in homes, streets, and state institutions. Using his musical gifting, he imparted this musical talent to the kids through daily regiments of rehearsals, private school education, and more importantly a new stage production.

Love All People’s signature niche was the fact that the teens in turn helped others like them in the public schools, churches and many secular venues across the U.S. This was done via a stage show Prentice and John created that allowed the teens to tell their stories to audiences of thousands of all ages, ethnicities, and diversities. As the teens sang blended harmonies and played band instruments with fully arranged musical scores, they amazed their audiences with hope for a better life.

As stated before, I joined in 1988. I was a 17 year old with a depressed outlook in life. I was offered the chance to see Love All People perform at a church concert. Determined to intimidate the performers, I sat in the front pew surrounded by well intentioned church parishioners, completely decked out in Heavy Metal Music attire complete with studded leather gloves and band paraphernalia, ripe with offensive artwork. And then there was the glam-rock eye makeup. I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.

As I sat in the front pew, I watched  angrily as the teens and their African American pastor, Prentice Minner, sang their songs about life, love and hope. I was determined to glare at them with threatening stares. But as each teen took the microphone to share their life story with an audience that was gripped with sympathy, horror, amazement and elation, I began to realize I was not alone in this world with my trouble.

Prentice Minner, began directing all of  his stage commentary of encouragement and tolerance towards me. Phrases like, “you are special just as you are”, and “God loves you regardless of your past”, and “we understand the difficulties you have gone through” began to bring a light into my soul that had been dark for several years.

Prentice took a few steps off of the stage during the concert, and knelt before me in a white two piece suit, and hugged this, now weeping, rock star wanna be. He whispered in my ear, “Jesus loves you and so do I”.

I joined Love All People Music Academy, and began to turn my life and attitude around. Through thousands of stage performances, and daily  work and rehearsal routines, my life was on course. The next year saw many changes come to my life. Our group was attacked one night outside our home by a gang of teens and I and one of the group leaders were shot twice with hollow point .22  bullets and hit with broken bottles and stones. I still carry a bullet in my leg as a reminder of the second time my life was spared.

We then embarked on a 3 year nationwide tour performing over 2,000 times in schools, churches, for a president and politicians, even performing with several celebrities. I witnessed amazing life transformations in thousands of troubled lives. Love can do a lot to help a broken heart.

I went on to become a music section leader, the Love All People Academy School Principal, Public Relations and Booking Manager, and the best dish washer the group had ever seen.

I left Love All People in 1993 to become married to my wife of 17 years and start a family. We remained in regular contact with them for many years. Prentice Minner continued singing and telling the world they were loved until his death in 2008. His age was a secret between he and God. He only admitted to being 39, grey hair notwithstanding.

He has left behind a legacy of happy adults who once were hurting teens. I am one such result. Today, I am passionate about life, seeing people succeed, and helping people to reach inside themselves to birth a positive outlook of themselves and their life.

Prentice always told me, he could never fix my problems. He could never do the work for me. Success was not an achievement. Change is easy. I had the power to choose to overcome my beginnings to get to my rightful ending. I had the power to choose to do the hard work each day to get to that destiny. Maintaining a change is the true challenge we all have.  Success happens in our hearts.

So now what do I do with my new lease on life?

Today, I have a life that I truly enjoy. I am passionate about showing others the same thing that was shown to me. The power to change exists in each of us. We all have the ability to overcome the past, and redesign the future. A bad beginning does not necessarily limit us to a bad ending. Many people fail to see this power in themselves.

I believe that this country needs to reawaken the same principle in itself. This nation has started to accept a depressed and corrupt version of itself as normal. This nation is not a just a collection of people. It is a concept. A concept that is under fire.

It was built with the premise of freedom to choose character and integrity and kindness and compassion. It was founded upon Christian principles that still serve as the legal foundation for all of western civilization. If we ignore that foundation, we will witness the fall of this nation.

It is my goal to use this blog magazine as my voice to communicate the call to personal accountability and responsibility to maintain the course our founding fathers shed blood to lay before us. It is not the job of paid politcrats in Government. It is the responsibility of We The People.

Take action. The freedom you have today, may not be here tomorrow.

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