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The first thing Joshua Foster did after his encounter
with an armed robber was to call his sons’ daycare provider.
“I’m gonna be a little late picking up the kids today,”
he told her. “I’m not sure exactly how late — maybe very
late — but I know I’ll be at least a little late, because I
just got shot.”
Now, most people confronted by some crazy dude with a
gun wouldn’t react by worrying about their babysitter. But, as
you’ll see, Foster isn’t most people. The gunshot didn’t hurt him as bad as
you’d think, Foster says. The wound looked like a cigarette burn, he
recalls; at first, it didn’t even bleed. Focused on trying to track
the robber’s getaway route from the MacArthur Boulevard currency
exchange, Foster was standing in the parking lot, trying to tell the
dispatcher which way the robber went, when somebody advised him,
“Man, you oughta sit down.” Foster unhitched the tailgate of
his truck and sat, then leaned back, and eventually lay down because, well,
he wasn’t feeling so great.
But Foster also wasn’t feeling the kind of
anger or outrage he thought he might after finding himself on the wrong end
of a bad guy’s gun. Even at the hospital, where he underwent
emergency surgery to assess the damage the bullet had done, Foster forced
the doctors and nurses to pause before slicing into his abdomen. “What do you call a dog with no legs?” he
asked, and proceeded to tell them a joke. “People kept asking me, ‘Why are you so
calm?’ But I didn’t ever feel that I was gonna die,”
Foster says. In the days and weeks that followed, he found out a
lot about the man who shot him. Gregory Lamar Hullum had, since the tender
age of 12, been abusing alcohol and drugs — beer, scotch, marijuana,
cocaine, amphetamines, LSD, PCP. To feed this habit, he committed a slew of
violent crimes. In August 2006 he held up four fast-food restaurants; in
November of that year he committed nine more armed robberies, not counting
two at the currency exchange. During the lull between August and November,
Hullum was either in poor health or in jail. And that wasn’t even the worst of it. Before
his string of stickups, Hullum had been in prison for the 1987 home
invasion and rape of a Lake Springfield woman — a crime he committed
at the age of 18. At the time, Hullum’s own mother described him as a
dullard and a liar, “untrustworthy and charming,” according to
published reports.
But Foster also discovered a series of connections
between himself and Hullum. A woman Foster knows well is married to a man
who had socialized with Hullum on numerous occasions. The man who sold
Hullum the .22-caliber handgun used against Foster is a former co-worker.
Perhaps most bizarrely, when Foster, a reformed vegetarian, made the
decision that eating meat was OK, it was a relative of Hullum’s who
served him the first barbecue he had consumed in more than 10 years, at a
downtown blues festival. That wasn’t all. “I could have easily
been in the same boat as Gregory Hullum,” Foster says. Growing up with a single mom and a crew of
troublemakers for friends, Foster spent his time skateboarding and hanging
out at all-night raves. He graduated from Lincoln Community High School in
the bottom quarter of his class. When he found himself so deep in trouble
that he was facing the possibility of a felony conviction, he straightened
up. His classmates must have seen some potential; they voted him Most
Likely to Save the World.
Now 33, Foster works for Central Management Services,
delivering mail to state agencies. Not exactly saving the world, you say?
Well, we’re just now getting to that. Foster was attending a music program at Harvard Park
Elementary, where his oldest son, Elijah, attends preschool. As he watched, he found himself
wondering: Which little boy was going to have to go to bed without supper?
Which little girl was being abused? Which kid was going to turn out like
Gregory Hullum? Foster decided that his son’s schoolmates
deserve a chance to take what he calls “a different path.” He
organized a group called The Revolution’s You, and launched a
campaign to collect musical instruments for the kids. He also began
planning a fundraiser for the school. An omnivorous music fan married to an
artist, Foster is staging a day-long dual-stage music festival and silent
art auction at Harvard Park on April 26.
The roster of bands already scheduled to play
includes Jill Benoit, the Dharma Bums, the Damwell Betters, Southeast
High’s Gospel Choir, and Tom Irwin. About 25 artists have agreed to
donate pieces for the auction. Foster wants more, more, more. “It’s about raising money to help the
school, but it’s just as much about helping the kids . . . have a
positive experience and realize that music is more than what they see on
MTV,” he says.
If you’re interested in donating a musical
instrument or helping with the festival, check out Foster’s Web site,
www.myspace.com/therevolutionsyou for details. It may be the only appeal
you’ll get. “I’m not very good at asking for
things,” Foster says. He’s the kind of guy who’s better at
expressing gratitude, even toward the man who shot him. “If I met Gregory Hullum today,” Foster
says, “I’d shake his hand and say thanks.”
Contact Dusty Rhodes at drhodes@illinoistimes.com
This article appears in Feb 14-20, 2008.
