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Story


"Excuse me, do you know where the Liberty Bell is?"

-Ger Ronan, CEO Yankee Home Improvement

 

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Story


"Excuse me, do you know where the Liberty Bell is?"

-Ger Ronan, CEO Yankee Home Improvement

 

CHANCE Meeting To Weekly Lunch Date

After an hour and a half,  I had learnt a lot about Jake. About the fire that made him homeless, the shelters he slept in, his family and his attempts to find work. In the process of giving him some advice on what employers look for when hiring I had a thought. I asked Jake if I was to make a small investment in him would he meet me in the same spot next week. We could discuss his week and his progress in finding work. He agreed, and even said he would look presentable, which prompted me to take his picture. I never realized that this chance meeting would turn into a yearlong friendship and weekly lunch appointment. But it did.

Strange Glances

As weeks turned into months I would get used to the strange looks we would get when walking together.  We graduated from Subway to having a hot meal at Midtown Diner II. Regina, our waitress would save us a space in the back of the restaurant.  After copiously perusing the menu, asking her all kinds of questions, he would order the exact same dish every week, meatloaf. No matter how many times he asked her if he could get a side of corn nibblets she never lost her patience when telling him no. Regina would sit with us between her other clients, posing for several pictures intrigued by the odd couple who would come in every Sunday and sit in the rear. Jake would become known to all the staff there and some of the regulars. He loved the attention.

SECRET THERAPIST

Being in the company of someone who only owns the clothes on his back is incredibly grounding. You get a totally different perspective and an appreciation of life. Jake became my therapist. I would feel guilty driving home knowing that I got more out of our Sunday lunches than he did. I would keep our meetings to myself until early 2016 and only then being selective in who I informed. As the summer drew to a close we become friends. He would tell me that he lived at the Sunday Breakfast Mission on 13Th street and would always refuse a lift back when offered. I would later find out why. He always walked with me the 8 blocks back to my car after we ate. Right up until the last minute pontificating on life or some of the strange things he noticed that no one else did. Jake alluded to his mental illness once, telling me how he would look at the doctor’s notes when the doctor left the room to take a call. He was able to recall verbatim the medical terms of the doctor’s diagnosis but didn’t really understand their meaning.

As the summer drew to a close we stumbled upon a cornball game that a downtown bar had left out from the night before. After some persuading he gave it a try only to become hooked. He was determined not to stop until he got at least one bag in the hole. Chuffed with his success he beamed all the way back to my car. Over the following weeks he would tell me how he never gives up trying, always alluding to the time he never gave up until he got a beanbag in the hole. Jake would retell some of the same stories over and over again. Never growing tired of his company, I dutifully listened.

WHY?

As summer turned to fall we still maintained our weekly appointment to discuss Jakes week and life in general. He never did get a job but would tell me about all his attempts. I would scour Craigslist, offer suggestions but Jake always had a great story of why he didn’t follow through. On the drive home I would always call my mother. Trying to explain why I would meet a homeless man every Sunday for lunch in Philadelphia was not the easiest to explain. America has been good to me and the more it offered me the more I felt the need to give back.

A Plan to End Homelessness

The solitary drive home gave me plenty of time to think. It was on one of these drives home in August that I formulated a plan to end homelessness. Around this time the “Ice bucket challenge” was in full swing. The idea of individual altruism was taking hold via YouTube. Plus, on a daily basis I was reminded of how something small could grow into an international phenomenon by looking at a framed vinyl record on my bedroom wall every morning. U2 were my local band growing up. There was only 1,000 (I still have #910 of their first single “Out of Control”) ever issued on 12inch vinyl with each one numbered. When I bought that record I had no idea how successful they would become.

Here was my idea to solve homelessness based on the ice bucket challenge and U2.

  1. Start a charity/foundation that involved no solicitation of funds. I even gave it a name, the “Where’s the Liberty Bell?” foundation.
  2. Continue to see Jake on a weekly basis, help him find work, get an apartment and get back on his feet to see if it could be replicated.
  3. Find out how many people are living with a roof over their heads compared to on the streets. Let’s says its 1,000 to every person living without a home. (just picking a round number). So I would have to convince one out of a thousand to replicate what I was doing. Piece of cake.
  4. Just as the Ice Bucket Challenge” was based on an individual’s efforts, stories of people doing what I was doing would be posted to a website. Here’s where Paul Hewson comes in, or as you know him, Bono. Musicians/celebrities would pick their favorite story and allow the homeless person along with their “mentor”, access to them, maybe VIP tickets to a show or something. Different competitions with different celebrities picking the homeless big brother story they liked the best.
  5. Organizations could do the same. If it took off companies would put their own “Jake” story on their home page. Can you imagine IBM or Apple with a picture on one homeless person along with the story on their homepage?
  6. Governors of each state would challenge each other to see who was solving their homeless problem the quickest.
  7. If people felt uncomfortable approaching a homeless person, each area could have a designated person, perhaps at a shelter to set up the first meeting and offer assistance.
  8. Find one person in 1,000 to help someone, homeless problem solved!.

The idea was relatively simple, put a human face on the problem. Solve the problem one person at a time. Then add in a little competition to see who gets to hob nob with the celeb of their choice who participated. Ice Bucket meets Big Brother Big Sister meets Make a “homeless” Wish Foundation. Call it whatever, but…….after several months of my weekly lunches with Jake I had an unpleasant epiphany.

My plan won’t work.  No matter how well intentioned I was I could never cure mental illness. I did, however make a friend. So undeterred I resolved to finish out the year and see if I could make some small impact.

Fall to Christmas

Throughout 2015 we would not connect on only 3 weekends. One was a trip back to visit my mother who was hospitalized in Dublin, another when the Pope visited Philly and only once when Jake overslept (majorly). He got mad at me when I brought down some guests. “why didn’t you tell me they were coming?, I look like a homeless person today.” Those were his exact words. After we stopped into Ross’s department store for a new shirt he settled down and enjoyed the attention of Sabrina and Raymond. and didn’t seem to mind that we gave the diner a break and ate outside.

Moving forward

When the six month mark came and went he was now comfortable to tell me about his past. Jake was the middle child of 9, born into a religious family in North Philadelphia. I was sure that his mental illness played a role in his current situation. However, he was never angry and never expressed a scintilla of bitterness towards anyone, just always appreciative of the time I gave him.  Certain things were still off limits, his hair for one. I was not permitted to see his dreads, he told me no one should have to see his grey hair. I would learn 5 months later that his grey hair issue would be the reason he was afraid to interview for jobs.

When it got colder we moved our meeting place indoors at Market Place East outside the Ross department store. I made sure to introduce him to all the security guards as I knew they would ask him to move on when he would wait for me.  Thanksgiving dinner at the Midtown Diner was no different than any other week, meatloaf smothered in ketchup.  Ross’s would be where he would try on every winter coat for his Christmas present in the store before settling on a dark one he thought he could keep clean.

Project Home

Winter 2015/16 was so unbelievably mild that our weekly meetings continued. Gainful employment still proved elusive. Aside from sending his first text and figuring out (sort of) how to take pictures with my phone, no other skills were mastered. I knew a year would be up shortly and aside from treating him to lunch every Sunday I had done nothing to really help Jake. All the jobs and people I had set him up to meet with had not happened. So I reached out to Sister Mary Scullion, an Irish nun who is famous for her work with the homeless in Philly. She put me in touch with her organization called Project Home in an effort to at least put a roof over Jake’s head.

On a brisk Monday morning in March Jake and I walked up to their offices on 1515 Fairmount. I was not going to set up yet another meeting and hear the following Sunday why he was not able to make it. Pauleen and Carmen greeted us and set Jake up to sleep at a shelter that night. I had nothing but admiration for both. They took their time with Jake, answering all his questions and concerns. Reassuring him that grey hair was not an impediment to finding work. They consented to letting me take their picture and over the following week would give me updates on trying to place Jake. Sitting watching them interact with my friend was mind blowing.

The care, the patience, and sincere interest in doing good for a complete stranger they just met was inspiring. We went back to have lunch at the diner to discuss Carmen’s instruction on where to go and who to see. Driving home I felt that finally there might be some good to come out of my weekly trips to PA.

Sad to say my hope was short lived. I excused myself from a Yankee Home managers meeting 2 days later to take a call from Carmen to inform me he didn’t show at “My Brothers Place” shelter that night or the following one. She asked if I had a way of getting a hold of him, I didn’t. “So let me get this straight you just drive down here every weekend, and he just shows up at the same place every Sunday?” Yep. I told her I see other people when I’m in Philly too, but Sunday afternoons are spent with Jake. Several weeks later she would say something to me that hurt. She said that because of me Jake might never want to better himself. That feeding him and giving him money (it wasn’t much) was enabling him. Man, I definitely didn’t want to hear that. Here I am trying to help and a professional is telling me I might be the problem. 

 

Tough Love

So over the next few weeks I tried some tough love. Carmen had laid out a plan to have him report in at a certain shelter, get a psychological assessment and be put on a waiting list for housing and SSI. Seemed logical to me, however you can only help people who want to be helped. It slowly started to dawn on me that what Jake said he wanted and what he actually wanted were two different things. So through April I would still have lunch at Midtown but limit my financial assistance. Telling him as an employer I had no problem rewarding performance if he followed through. Probably the complete wrong approach, but I was starting to lose hope that anything that I did would help. So I set up another meeting with Project Home but he would always get confused with the times and dates.

TOUGH LOVE

Philadelphia is an especially beautiful city in spring, steeped in history with modern art around every corner. Strolling around the city we would always bump into a fair or festival. The Chinese Lantern Festival at Franklin Square where an entire park was taken over was a site to behold. Still meeting weekly, still enjoying each other’s company, things came to an abrupt halt May 1.  

This would be our last meeting as I got the sad and unexpected news of my mother’s passing. Returning back from Ireland to attend my eldest daughter’s graduation at Babson (5/14) I would go down to Philly the next day to see “himself”. No Jake.

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