I’ve had the honor and privilege to have contributed three nonfiction Christmas features for publication in Street Sense. Each one is dear to me in its own right. But this Random Act of Kindness holiday story holds a special place in my heart because at a certain age we expect we shouldn’t be believing in Santa any longer — but not me. All I can say is “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,” and he was my friend.
The opening lyrics from one of my favorite holiday CDs, “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” keeps ringing in my head this time of year: “Christmas time is here, happiness and cheer…” Can’t you hear it?
I’ve got every Charlie Brown Holiday CD there is. Why does it mean so much to me? Because like Charlie Brown, I was a lovable loser at one time, too, who couldn’t accidentally make a right decision.
It seemed even when I only had one choice to make, I’d screw it up. I made good situations bad and bad situations worse, and the results of my life showed it. I went from “living a semi-charmed kind of life” (thanks Third Eye Blind), to living in the streets and byways of the same cities I had experienced so much professional success in. Maybe I could find it again by retracing my steps, I thought, having not yet learned the meaning of insanity.
But each year, hearing that song always makes me think of my late great dear friend Dr. Bill Daily and his family, who had adopted a 50-some-year-old homeless man. It didn’t make any sense to me at the time. But later it did, and his loving random act of kindness on a cold Christmas Eve so long ago changed me greatly as a person and spiritually inspired me.
The year was 1997 or ‘98. To this day and all years since, as we get closer to Christmas my mind begins to flood back to that moment playing a magical video of that wonderful occasion where this exceptional warm human being just showed up out of nowhere. He swooped down out of the sky on his sleigh (a well-worn Honda Del Sol) and gave me one of the greatest Christmas presents one could give, the gift of human kindness towards a lost, scared and, as they used to say, “down and out” soul.
If you know anyone who lived in Cincinnati in the ‘90s, they’ll tell you that being stuck homeless in the Over-the-Rhine area was no place you wanted to be. And it sure in h*** wasn’t Kansas. This was NOT some movie experience like “Down and Out in Beverly Hills,” “Blindside” or other movies that attempt to humanize homeless people. Oh no, it was a living hell. Being from inner city D.C. can make you arrogantly think, at times, that you’re a bad*** and you’re not scared of anything cause you’ve seen it all. But my time in the “OTR” had me fearful of losing my life daily. And I could see no way out. I would pray at the end of each day, “And please, God, don’t let me die here in the OTR.”
You see, I had come to Cincinnati after yet another eviction in Michigan, running from the source of my pain and confusion, thinking a change of venue was all I needed. But of course, that unrecognized source was me. It was not the first city I’d just picked up and moved to in an attempt to reclaim a long lost former life and get different results from my many zany plans and strategies that were formulated in a mind that had demonstrated that making a good choice was counterintuitive and dumb luck.
It was not going to be a Merry Christmas. No halls would be decked and you could forget about the 12 days of gifts. No pipers piping or drummers drumming, just 12 days of sadness and melancholy.
When you think of the holidays, you may get these warm and fuzzy feelings of happy holidays past. You recall the sights and sounds of everything connected to this joyous time of year. I can remember a time when downtown shopping areas came alive with the mechanical displays of motion and music in any city. I feel sorry for the younger generations who missed the awesome presentations and competitions among the downtown department stores as well as the smaller shops.
Downtown was a winter wonderland for us kids and adults. Every year, we drove downtown, parked and walked around to see the sights of Christmas as one store would try to outdo the other with their chosen themed windows. I couldn’t wait to see the Hecht’s, Woodie’s or Garfinkel’s windows. Even though we couldn’t shop in all of them, we thought their windows were the most magnificent. As a homeless person in the center city I spent many a holiday walking around downtown without any of the experiences similar to those I had as a child.
Partly because of the first energy crisis in 1976, one of my favorite presidents and human beings, Jimmy Carter, encouraged Americans to cut back on holiday lights and downtown displays. And just that quickly the pageantry of downtown Christmas’ disappeared. Younger people will never know what was lost, but they can get an idea by thinking about the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, which lasts only a couple of hours from start to finish. Now think about a downtown lit up with all the lights and sounds of the holiday’s, starting with Thanksgiving on until January 2nd each year. A lot of families would, like mine, load up the station wagon (this was our version of an SUV and many large families had one) and ride around various neighborhoods to enjoy the elaborate lights adorning people’s homes in every section of the city after leaving downtown.
That has basically gone away, too. Today you’d be hard pressed to find more than a couple of houses on any given block with lights up. But I’ve heard an old family on upper 16th St NW still had their display where there’d be bus loads of people stopping by to stand around looking at the block’s lights. I can’t remember the name of the streets but I can still get there by car like it was yesterday. It’s hard to explain to the younger generations what the holidays were like. The innocence of those times is gone. I know every generation thinks their experiences were better, but there’s no doubt Christmas just ain’t what it used to be and we boomers had the best of it. Just ask anyone over 60.
For some reason, Christmas for me has always been about the smells. When we didn’t have much, my parents made things as festive as they could afford. Long after the thoughts of what gifts I received have faded, I still remember everything associated with Christmas. The fruit, the candies, the cakes, pies and food that were holiday staples in our house are still in my mind and I can smell them today. And for the record, I loved the much maligned fruit cake, especially with eggnog.
Being homeless and stuck mostly walking around some empty urban core somewhere, all that you remember about holidays past can slowly disappear. The closest thing you may get to experiencing that feeling while homeless is maybe when you get sliced processed turkey as the entree in a holiday soup kitchen meal, or a basic pair of socks or gloves as a gift in anonymous wrapping paper from people you’ve never connected with.
While the rest of the world is so excited this time of year, thinking of the coming days, everyone is in a festive mood. There’s no more depressive or empty feeling than walking out of a homeless holiday event like the annual dinner that used to be held at Washington’s Convention Center, back into your reality of nothingness. At the time, my address was Cincinnati’s Drop-In Center. A large low barrier shelter. No beds, just yoga-like mats laid out on the floor in rows in what looked like a gymnasium.
On this Christmas Eve the place was decorated similar to my mom’s elementary school classrooms with music playing and holiday treats everywhere. More things to eat than at any other time of year. There was what seemed like hundreds of volunteers literally bumping into each other to serve us. Not to mention kids they drove to come in an effort no doubt to demonstrate to them their blessed life. But under the surface there was an overwhelming amount of sadness in the air as some of them watched the clock, eager to get home to their holiday observance, and if you looked closely in our faces you could see the longing to have somewhere to go, too. They tried their best to make us feel part of the holiday’s excitement. But it wasn’t really working for me. A lot of us missed whatever version of “home” we’d experienced so much that we talked openly about how holidays were the worst part of experiencing homelessness.
Into this void rode my stand-in for Santa, Xavier University’s Dr. Bill Daily.
I can’t remember what he was wearing that night, but it was definitely not a Santa suit. Look at a photo of him and you’ll see he didn’t need one. What do you think? We’d begun a casual relationship because of his involvement with the center and his support for our Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless’s street publication “Streetvibes.” (The Coalition’s Executive Director, who became my mentor and lifelong friend, introduced us. Donald Whitehead is now the executive director of the National Homeless Coalition here in DC. He hired me for my present job and along with Dr. Daily and my super caseworker Cheryl formed my version of a Dream Team that wouldn’t let me die.)
He walked up and very casually said, “Get your things and take a ride with me. Don’t worry. I’ll bring you back.” I was thinking what if I lose my “bed” for the night. But there was much more in store for this “Night before Christmas.“
We walked out the doors into the cold midwest winter night where, double-parked, was his sleigh with it’s 6 reindeer under the hood idling and ready for a Christmas run. But to where? I didn’t have a clue. I didn’t have much to pack as I remember, just a backpack was all and my world neatly fit into it.
We took off heading out of town. It was a few minutes before I asked, after thinking to myself, “Where the hell are we going?” As we hit the darkness of the highway, I was thinking, “Oh well.” Having just left what had seemed like a depressing Hollywood set of a homeless “It’s a Wonderful Life,” any destination was a relief. His answer, “Home with me for Christmas” as we passed the sign that said “Welcome to Indiana” headed to who knows where, I am wondering who this guy really is.
This is what I learned. Bill was the most loving and compassionate individual I’ve ever met with a sense of fairness, sincere concern and devotion to people in need and human rights causes that remains unmatched to this date. If the Pope himself asked me to nominate one person for sainthood, without any hesitancy it would be Bill.
But why and what experiences must this man have had to open his eyes and heart so completely to the suffering of others. What made him never give up on me and others struggling with various challenges of life, when I surely would have? For starters, Bill was born to a single unwed mother whose father walked out, abandoning him and two other siblings. After an uncertain start in life, at 4 and a half he was adopted by an aunt and experienced what it’s like to have very little in terms of money and possessions while being separated from his birth family. I am sure that’s what bonded us and the many others his children have told mehe had taken into his home, including whole families and foreign exchange students.
We were on the road for what seemed like forever. I hadn’t been this far west out of the city and didn’t know what to expect, almost like those early ocean voyagers who feared they’d drop off the edge of the world because it was flat. And just then after about a hour’s drive in the snow, we hit an exit marked Batesville. As we rode past a large factory complex, I thought “isn’t that … yes it is,” the home of one of the largest casket makers in the world and with lights on you could see them stacked up inside a kind of showroom. This was a weird “Twilight Zone” kind of moment as we rumbled down the roads and over sets of train tracks to pull in a driveway on a street of large nice houses a world away from “OTR” and the shelter.
As we got out and walked toward the door, I was having second thoughts about how this house would receive this obviously struggling individual into what seemed like a Norman Rockwell Christmas illustration. The door opened and this large family greeted me with the love reserved for a long-lost relative. They introduced themselves one by one and looped me right into the goings on. Mind you, I was very self conscious about fitting in. One of the main reasons was that I’d never spent a Christmas in the home of someone who didn’t look like me. And lo and behold, it was a family Christmas like most others: parents and a house full of kids and grandkids who kept arriving right up to Christmas Day’s dinner being served.
And in a Random Act of Kindness, Bill and his wife presented me with something I hadn’t experienced in a long time, my very own bedroom with it’s own adjoining bathroom. I wondered if they understood the effects of this kind gesture, considering I’d become so used to communal toilets and showers. I’d forgotten what it was like not to have to share this most private of spaces. And if that wasn’t enough, as he turned to leave out the room he hands me the remote saying, “Oh, you have cable,” which made me elated to know I could watch anything I wanted. This was a far cry from the choices given at the drop-in where, to keep arguments down, staff chose what was to be viewed and almost never something I was interested in. My pattern was I would come in and lay straight down to sleep no matter what time it was.
I awoke Christmas morning to the pitter-patter of excited kids coming in the door and down the steps as presents were exchanged and opened. As I watched, it reminded me of my family’s Christmases. Just then Bill told me I had gifts too. All these years later I have not a clue as to the gifts I received. But what gift I am sure I received was the power of family, belonging and acceptance. No one paid any extra attention to me; they all just went along doing what families do on Christmas Day, kind of like my family. The focus was on the excitement of watching the kids experience the joy of it all. All day long, more Daily’s showed up until it was a full house. And after we ate I retired to my quarters to watch football. I couldn’t believe these people were this comfortable with me, a homeless stranger, being there. But I’ve since learned that they were used to Bill bringing home an assortment of people needing to be a part of a family. I am told these guests included a Haitian priest, entire Vietnamese and Nicaraguan refugee families, home sick student athletes and me.
I was a house guest of the family until the new year. And on Jan. 2 or so, I said my goodbyes to everyone as Bill and I headed back to the city. I had left the shelter alone with no family connections in a strange city and came back as a member of a small town, one that to this day still counts me as a member. In a Random Act of Kindness long ago Bill gave me the gift of being “Home for the Holidays.”
###
Author’s Note: in 2018, my dear friend Bill Daily passed away with the knowledge that my life was on track to accomplish so many of the things he hoped for me and had prayed for. He never shared with me the seriousness of his condition. Had I known, I would have rushed there. (I did make it back for his memorial service at Xavier.) When I’d call he’d go on about how my transformation pleased him so much and always ended our conversations with his patented “keep smiling.” And when I think of him, I do.
