I lived in the Fan and Museum Districts of Richmond, VA for almost fifteen years, starting in the mid-nineties. There were a number of local legends that lived in or around that area at the time, but none were quite as omnipresent as Leo. You would see (and often smell) him on most streets, cleaning up litter or walking to wherever it was he had to be that day. Leo was in his mid-fifties and was homeless by choice for going on thirty years. His face was wrinkled, like cheap linen, with a scraggly white beard which further compounded his image of a grizzled thin man whose age looked far beyond his actual years. The self-proclaimed “Mayor of Grace Street,” he was a continuous fixture for all of us who lived, worked, or went to school downtown.
One of the many traits that he was known for was his refusal
to take a hand out. He did odd jobs for local businesses in order to eke out
the meager bit of money he would need to live on, and would scrounge the rest
from the discarded wares so many of us threw out despite their still usable and
working condition. He would sometimes eat at soup kitchens or with the
Food-Not-Bombs crowd who handed out free vegan lunches in Monroe Park, but in
exchange for his meal he would help the volunteers as he could, spreading the word
or encouraging the many strung out addicts that inhabited the city to just eat
something already damnit. He frequented the little sandwich shop where I worked
throughout college, coming in most often on cold nights for a cup of soup or
coffee or both if it had been a good day. One summer night he came in with a carton of vanilla ice cream he'd bought from the grocery store down the block and enough change to get him unlimited refills on sodas. He told me he loved Root Beer Floats and had just had a craving. I hadn't had one in years and later that night ordered one at a diner. It was delicious.
Leo’s shanties became a regular site in the alleys behind the
student apartments and small local businesses that used to dot so much
of Grace and Franklin Streets, before the university started buying up all the
properties and leasing them to the likes of Jimmy John’s and Qdoba. Using
thrown away milk crates, boxes, and random scraps of metal, he constructed
little homes for himself. When the police would inevitably tear them down, he
would move on and rebuild like any good homeowner who suffers a catastrophic
loss. These structures allowed him to become an entertainer of sorts, opening
up his hovel to others - offering other homeless men and women a place to sleep
for a night (but never longer). All were welcome, from the drunks to the stoned
to the young squatter kids who hopped the train cars into town in torn clothes
but with well-fed dogs. It wasn’t uncommon to find him and his friends sitting
out front of his shack, in a circle of salvaged lawn chairs or stained
furniture with the stuffing popping out, drinking and laughing and
commiserating and recouping, like a surrealist painter’s bizarre interpretation
of a 1960’s dinner party.
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| Not actually one of Leo's, but amazingly close. |
Leo built one of his houses in the alley behind my first apartment in Richmond. One afternoon as I was walking home through that alley, I came across
him and his group having one of their many campfire moments. Leo and I waved
and exchanged our usually short pleasantries as I scuttled past, when one of
his guests yelled to me and asked me for a dime. Leo became incensed, cursing
at the man that he “don’t like freeloaders so you can get the hell out if you’re
gonna keep that up.” The man got up to leave. I will admit that I began to walk
a little faster and didn’t look back, not wishing to witness one of the fabled
hobo knife-fights people were always warning me about. However in the end, the
man wasn’t banished and left to fend for himself as penance for asking me for
the proverbial fish. From what I heard, Leo instead taught him to catch his own.
I eventually moved farther from Leo’s stomping grounds, and
he eventually died of pneumonia and exposure. However I, along with countless
others, never forgot about him and likely never will. Despite his gruff
exterior and raspy voice that rarely let out more than a few words at a time
peppered with old man grunting, he was a kind person. He was, after all, a mayor,
even if that was in name only. And like any good mayor, he looked after his
city and those that lived in it, especially those that needed the most help. He
did this at no benefit to himself and seemingly refused award or recognition. It wasn't his job, it's just who he was. He
was no saint, you can be sure of that, but he wasn’t a shiftless lazy ne’er-do-well
either.
Admittedly, I was a starry-eyed young girl back in the days
that I knew Leo. It’s possible that I’ve romanticized the memory of him and all
that he stood for through some limousine liberal sentimentality of how attuned
I was with the downtrodden. I mean, I have other stories about homeless people
I knew – there was Bridget who had ovarian cancer and a crack habit, Kenny the
schizophrenic who I once witnessed giving a leaping high five to his imaginary
friend, Sam who sold Hard Times papers by timidly approaching you, head bowed,
saying “Hey boss man, boss man, sorry to bother you.” There are plenty others.
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| Sister Simone Campbell |
Regardless of whether or not my characterization of Leo
rings 100% true (and I really like to think it does), there are plenty of Leo’s
out there. Just this morning I was reading about Sister Simone Campbell, a Catholic
nun who is also director of a social justice group called NETWORK which lobbies on behalf of the poor.
Her treatment by her detractors at a recent House Budget Committee are, shall we say, disheartening. There are many others out there like Sister Simone and Leo, those who do this
kind of work every day. They live simply and rightly and help others along that
path.
It would be easy to just let the take away from this story
be about Leo’s self-sufficiency and refusal to go on the dole, and to then use
that as an argument against entitlement programs. To me, that would be missing
the point entirely and simply reading into something only what you want to
hear. One mustn’t forget that it was Leo’s choice to live the way he did. He
came from a comfortable home and one day decided it wasn’t the life for him. Yes
I did learn lessons of self-reliance from him, but in the end it was his sense
of community and willingness to help others that has always stuck with me. His
is a story of the two mentalities working together in tandem for the greater
good. It’s why I’ve never been able to understand how we’ve come to ignore both
sides and thus let the every-man-for-himself attitude overtake our cultural
identity and dictate our political discourse.
As I’ve gotten older, I think about my memories of Leo and
what they taught me. I think about them when people talk about “personal responsibility,”
“American Individual Exceptionalism,” and freaking “boot straps.” I think about
Leo when I hear Libertarian politicians talk about how it isn’t the responsibility
of our government, the tool of the American people as a working body, to care
for those less fortunate. I think about him when those same leaders claim such duties
are solely the responsibility of the disembodied concepts of private charities
and churches, as if the burden of fellowship falls only to a few groups and not
our country as a whole.
Call it an overused platitude, but the notion that we are all in this together is one that we can no longer continue to ignore. There is no kindness in anarchy,
and without kindness there is no peace. Leo understood that, and he practiced
his life accordingly. It’s weird to think that our country and its leaders would
be best served by following the examples of a smelly disheveled man who once renewed my appreciation of a good ice cream float.
