Baby it was cold outside Saturday (Nov. 1), but that’s just how Rev. Gordy Jones wanted it for the first Maysville Homeless Awareness Walk.
The cold didn't seem to affect turnout for the event which began with a walk that gained steam along the way, with speeches in the middle that sometimes were quite graphic as people who have experienced homelessness described what it was like, and ended with participants “sleeping” in boxes for an hour or two.
Mike Young knows firsthand what it’s like to be homeless; his account of the times he spent homeless is not for the faint of heart.
At the tender age of 14, Young's story of homelessness began. He was alone, without shelter and no money to buy food. Later in life, he managed to rise above his situation with a good job at DP&L and a marriage. He had achieved the stability he had missed since being abandoned years before.
But the marriage ended in divorce. “I literally had nothing to live for,” Young said. “I was broken-hearted.” He started doing drugs and drinking too much and one day he woke up under a bridge with a toe frozen to the ground.
“It was as black as this microphone,” he said.
He had been “living hand-to-mouth like some kind of animal,” he said. Young ate whatever he could get. “I ate everything from blue jays to river rats … I ate every house cat between Manchester and Maysville.”
When he really needed a bath he would go to the laundromat, buy a box of laundry soap, put it in the fountain and when the bubbles got high enough, he’d get in and bathe.
“I was a straight up animal,” Young told the audience of around 70 people. “I tell you this just so you know what a man will do when he’s desperate.”
What both experienced homeless speakers wanted the audience to know was simple — it can and does happen to anyone.
Young scored 17th in the state on his SAT; he was valedictorian of his high school class and has a Mensa-level IQ of 164. He still he wound up living on the street, more than once.
“Bad choices got me there,” Young admitted.
The late Polly Hester helped him out by taking him for a haircut and shave and the rest of the community got behind him and helped him turn his life around.
Bad choices didn’t get Rhonda Youngman there, cancer did. She worked for Green Tokai and was told, after being off for six months for cancer treatments, her job of more than five years was no longer there for her.
So, in 2004 right after her last chemo treatment, an already frightened Youngman found herself living in her car. What she thought would be a short term situation turned into 14 months of hell. She started taking and selling drugs for money to get by and forget the hopelessness that comes with homelessness.
She considered suicide and even sat down with a bottle of pills she believed would do the trick. Somehow she managed to awaken to the still full bottle of pills on the floor.
“I just need you to know that when you’re homeless you have no hope, no self-worth.”
It was difficult for both to share their accounts, but once they began talking their stories flowed from them like a cathartic ritual. Youngman said she decided to tell her story so people would realize “there’s a story behind that (homeless) face.
“Homelessness is not catchin’” Youngman said. “You can get close to a homeless person. You may find out they’re not the people you stereotype them to be.”
Neither wants people to make assumptions about people who find themselves homeless.
Rev. Greg Jones could not agree more. “Most people don’t expect to be homeless,” Jones, who also experienced homelessness himself due to a house fire, said. Jones also touched on the issue of people becoming homeless due to losing a job or money being spent on things other than rent, such as medical bills.
“Many of you are one pink slip away from homelessness … Let’s stop sleeping on this issue.”
State Rep. Mike Denham agreed. Though homelessness is not a huge problem in Kentucky, we must work to stay ahead of the problem and to make our record better, he said. “One homeless person is one too many.”
“It’s nearly winter, and soon the days and nights in our part of Kentucky will be frigid and tinged with snow and ice,” he said. “Thank goodness most of us have warm homes to go to when the chill hits. But not everyone is so fortunate.”
It will get much colder than it was Saturday and for those of us who spent some time on the ground with nothing but a box to protect us, 41 degrees was too cold.
Gordy Jones spent only two hours “homeless” on the ground at Rotary park inside a cardboard box and it was plenty long enough.
“I felt a feeling of isolation, of ‘what did I do to deserve this?’ and ‘what am I going to do when it gets colder?'”
Gwendolyn Boone looked pretty miserable inside her box and reported the same kind of feelings.
“Even though I was surrounded by friends and neighbors for the event, being in a box on the cold, hard ground was lonely. I could see and hear other people, but I was alone in my experience; alone with my thoughts,” she said.
In the end, however, Gordy Jones was about as happy as he could have been about how the walk turned out. “It’s been one of the best days of my life … We’re all just pieces of the puzzle,” he said. He wants more people to become aware and feel moved to become a piece of the puzzle.
“We are our brother’s keeper. That’s our goal today … It does take a village,” he told the audience. “It’s us all working together.”
The final word…God loves everyone and if you love God you have to love people, Gordy Jones said.
The Ledger Independent is online at: http://www.maysville-online.com