Helping our neighbors reclaim their lives, one at a time
By Francie Broderick, PfP Executive Director
Originally published: Tuesday, Nov. 25 2008
Sunday, I made the switch. I gave up the $8 hand-held transistor radio that I carried every day on my walks through Forest Park and “upgraded” to an iPod. I had resisted my kids’ efforts for some time, but they finally convinced me it was so easy that “even you can do it.”
It is wonderful, and, better yet, it came with earphones better than the 99-cent models I’ve been using. I never have heard such sounds in my ears before. I was so energized I almost danced as I walked through the woods in the park listening to “Bruce Springsteen Live in Dublin.”
This remarkable bit of technology even was drowning out the worrying that always floods my head when I walk, thoughts of people coming to the agency where I work and us never seeming to have enough to go around.
A glimpse of blue plastic brought me back to reality. Back in the woods next to a tree I could make out a small pile of cans, a sleeping bag and a blue tarp. It was not a Boy Scout campsite.
My mind immediately began playing over the faces I had seen that morning:
Did this tiny outpost belong to the man carrying the backpack whom I saw walking out of the park earlier? Could it be John’s, the man who told me he had lived under an overpass until the U.S. Highway 40 reconstruction began? Or could it even be that lady who sleeps at the bus stop on Lindell? I had not seen her lately.
By that point, I certainly was not dancing. But then I made a conscious decision to replace these faces, just for this walk, with some of the other new faces that I have met this year, people who would be spending their first holiday season with us at Places for People.
The first who came to mind was Jonah. He is 52 years old and had spent almost all of his adult life, literally, living in his parents basement smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. When we initially encountered him, he had no friends, no hope for something better. The day we helped him move into his own apartment he was so happy he clapped his hands. Now he comes to our club program and has friends and a job he is responsible for. He smiles.
And then there is the tall, handsome young man with piercings and markings on his face who seemed to have such a bright future as a basketball player years ago. He is well known to the police and business owners in the University City area. He has spent much of the past few years living on the street with his mental illness untreated. He bounces as he walks and talks constantly to himself, to his voices. His illness is not managed yet, but I knew we had the beginning of a lasting relationship with him yesterday when I saw him watering the plants in the reception area, his constantly moving body causing spills that he was quick to clean up.
And there is the young man who just breaks my heart when I think of him: He grew up in foster care, the early stages of his schizophrenia making him a hard child to place. After he aged out of the foster care system, he was homeless for more than a year. “It was hard,” he told me, “really hard.” He still looks lost, but now there are people joining him on his journey and too many women who want to mother him! He wants pecan pie for Thanksgiving.
The last face that comes to mind is June’s. Not a young woman, not physically healthy or strong, but what we would call “a handful” nonetheless.
She was being discharged from a short hospital stay and coming to our agency for the first time. My staff went to pick her up, and the hospital social worker asked, “Do you feel safe driving in the car with her?” An unnerving question to say the least! Over the next few weeks, she did lash out physically and verbally several times, and I was starting to think we had met our match.
Then, somehow, the magic of never giving up and the power of community won her over. Last week, when she was being verbally abusive to other clients in our clubhouse, one of my staff said to her, “If you can't stop that, I will have to come over there and hug and kiss you into happiness.” She said, “All right,” and smiled.
As 2009 looms with predictions of cuts in our state funding, of foundations cutting back on their giving, of more people losing jobs, health care and housing, Bruce Springsteen is singing in my ears “Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on, hold on.” We will.
Francie Broderick of University City is a frequent contributor to the Commentary page. She is the director of Places for People, a nonprofit mental health center based in St. Louis..
