When his two brothers were shot, Terry Huff raced back to his hometown of Washington, D.C.
It was 1983, and Huff left behind his efforts at building a music career in Los Angeles to remain in the District. He said he hoped to better understand the violence that took such a toll on his family and his city.
But first he needed to try to understand it. He read and pondered. He came to the conclusion that crime grows out of injustice and inequality.
“The problem is that there are billions of people that are poor and just a few that are wealthy,” Huff said. “Nothing can survive like that.”
The way he tells it, his own life got off to a promising start, with a break in the music business at age 13. Joining his brother Andrew in an R&B act called Andy and the Marglows, Huff’s sweet tenor voice helped send “Just One Look” to the pop charts. It was a short-lived glory, though. Doris Troy came out with her own version of the song two weeks later, making major waves in the soul market. Andy and the Marglows soon dissolved.
He tried odd jobs and a stint in law enforcement. Then a gig selling insurance helped him make enough money to move to Los Angeles and get back to his music. That’s when his brother Lonnie was shot and killed in D.C.. His brother Andrew was shot, too, but survived. And Huff came back to D.C.
He is 64 now, still ruminating upon the root causes of poverty. But he too has ended up on the streets. He’s been in and out of shelters and he stays in one now. The life is less than easy, the food is less than appealing. Huff can’t ignore the murkiness of it.
His sense of justice is constantly challenged. He sees a lot of guys at the shelter who seem to belong somewhere else. Guys who sneak weapons in. Men so old and sick they belong in a nursing home. Men who have great talents to offer the world but are trapped in street life.
Living in a shelter hasn’t changed Huff’s conviction that poverty and violence are tied up with injustice.
His own plan for escaping homelessness is rooted in the success of an “ incremental pay system” that he has devised. It sounds something like a pyramid scheme. He promises it will make its participants rich.
Huff sees himself as a passionate man, a religious man who has known fame and destitution alike. His creed is love, and his plan for it is money.
“Man has yet to love another man simply for being a human being,” Huff said.
