While Mark and Donnie Wahlberg Were Soaring to Stardom, Their Brother Was Off to Jail – That’s Where He Met Jesus by Caleb Wood for CBN News
His brothers were making music and movies while he was posing for mug shots.
In the mid-80s, Donnie and Mark Wahlberg took the music world by storm, topping the charts with “New Kids on the Block” and “Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch”.
Around the same time, their brother Jim was moving in a different direction. Behind bars. But it was when he was locked up that his soul finally became free when one of the most admired women in the world paid him a visit.
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“I lived a rough and tumble life. I was always a hustler, was always manipulative, just to get what I wanted, and I did whatever I had to to get it,” says Jim.
It was on the rough streets of a Boston neighborhood where Jim Wahlberg learned the art of the hustle. Jim was the middle of nine kids of hardworking parents trying to give their children a better life.
“We had nothing; our neighbors had nothing. And we were happy,” he says.
Then they moved into a middle-class neighborhood when Jim was eight, and he realized just how poor his family was.
“Right away I felt different. I felt less than,” says Jim. “So, I started taking things that didn’t belong to me, so that I could try to live up to the way they got to live.”
Hustling, stealing, and running from police soon became a way of life. Jim was only 10 the first time he was arrested. He would spend his teen years in and out of juvie while slowly becoming dependent on drugs and alcohol.
“I would drink to try to get rid of the shame and those feelings of self-loathing. It’s all rooted in fear. Fear of what you think of me. Fear of not being good enough,” says Jim.
Then at 17, Jim found himself in prison where he’d serve five years for armed robbery. The time behind bars had changed nothing.
