I’m looking at the silver lure of the new moon and thinking about Charlie Hawkins.
I only knew Charlie for the fifteen minutes we sat together this afternoon in Fountain Park. It only took seconds to see that he was falling through veils of darkness—he was homeless, addicted to alcohol, and he slumped on the bench as though his spirit had been unplugged. There was a hospital bracelet around his stick-thin wrist, and a pungent cloud of alcohol enveloping him—he seemed to live in a private climate of physical pain and emotional despair.
What’s the most common element two people can share in a situation like this? I wanted to talk with him. I wanted to look past the bloody terrain of his wounded life to see if I could find him in the shadows of his flickering consciousness. Sympathy may have guided me to sit next to him, but it was respect that made me ask, “so what do you do, Charlie?”
He tilted his head trying to focus and hesitated. His body was down to the bone and I was told that he hadn’t eaten or had water for five days. His words were a guttural stream of bruised vowels.
But in that stream I heard, “I was a pressman” and before I let him continue,I said, “Wait, wait.” I knew a little about printing. “What kind of presses?” I asked.
He paused, a slow grin taking shape on his sunken face, his eyes widening for a moment. “Big ones, 30ft long some of them, A.B. Dicks, some two tower presses, and man my feet hurt.” I’d experienced that myself. “You didn’t use rubber matting?, I asked? He realized we shared an experience. His laughter rocked quietly in his chest.
I tried an old printer’s joke, sexist as it was—“So, were you a stripper?” This was a reference to film set-ups and plate-making. This time he laughed. “Hell yes, we had to make our own plates a lot, so I stripped plenty.”
For a moment there was light in his eyes as he recalled parts of his life. Then he slumped back down, slipping under the surface of the summer afternoon. I had to go and told him that I would be back, that I wanted to know him and about his life because I wanted to know more about living without a home.
As I got up to leave Charlie said, “You understand what I did! You know how close the registration (printing accuracy) had to be back then?”
“A hairline,” I said. He nodded and smiled again.
Charlie Hawkins died a few hours later. I do not know the official medical statement, but I knew that when I met him he was falling—falling through time and space and that whatever line keeps us tethered to the gravity of life had been severed, and he was disappearing like a silver lure, its glinting lights extinguished by surrender.
•••
Bill Arrowood, who advocates for Kent County’s disadvantaged, introduced me to Charlie Hawkins with the hope that the Spy might open a dialogue about Chestertown’s homeless. Throughout the year, between 24 and 34 homeless people, including children, seek shelter in our community. Many are helped by the Samaritan Group Shelter during the winter months but when the shelter closes for the season people seek places in the woods, vacant building and backyards in the area.
Unfortunately, in order to offer a safe environment for others, most shelters will not accept homeless people with active, acute drug and/or alcohol addictions. That leaves fewer options for the addicted and mentally ill.
Kathy Bosin, Spy colleague, ex-social worker, and board member of Talbot Interfaith Shelter in Easton, calls attention to the complexity of these issues. “Addiction and mental health issues sometimes converge with—or help create—a type of person who refuses the help offered. For them, right or wrong, their independence is a driving force in their lives even if it’s a destructive path.”
Like Charlie, who moved from town to town and has been chronically homeless in Pennsylvania and Maryland for five years, many homeless people are transient. HUD estimates that on any given day in America upwards of 610,000 people can be counted as homeless, and of these, a quarter are children under 18. The real numbers are probably much higher.
There are no “at faults” in this part of Charlie’s story. I do not know about his past but during his last years a constellation of illnesses kept him beyond reach. The many times that UM Shore Health ER, Chestertown Police, Samaritan Group Shelter, Genesis Corsica Hill in Centreville and probably countless others helped him, testify to the availability of services for the critically addicted/mentally ill and homeless. They should be commended.
But is this the end of the story? Will I be writing another just like it soon?
Or, like so many other positive things happening in Chestertown, could this be the catalyst to help the Samaritan Group work toward a permanent, year round facility for those who are able to accept an offered hand?
And for the Charlies and a half-million Americans with serious mental health issues and no place to go but jail, the ER and the streets due to the paring away of community mental health…what about them?
Additional note. Some readers have asked about the Samaritan Group. To find out about them go here.
MARY WOOD says
Editor,
This is a heartbreaker. And the State closed Upper Shore a facility which took in those with addictions and mental illness.
Our community got together and built the Sultana, surely we can do as much for those of us who are suffering.
Thanks to the Spy for bringing Charlie’s story to us.
Carol Wise says
Mary, excellent point.
Fletcher R. Hall says
Editor,
In Chestertown, amazing. Reminds me of the old saying: “There but for the grace of God, go I.”
Surely, Charlie Hawkins should not met such an end. Not in Chestertown. When I began college some 50 years ago, I looked at Chestertown and saw a bucolic, quintessential Eastern Shore town. However, 50 years has passed. What has happend? As I recently wrote in an Op-Ed piece, the world changes, and I guess so has Chestertown.
Kathi Donegan says
Editor,
This is beautiful writing. And yes, I believe this will stir many of us to reach out more often but also to work towards a common goal for Kent County. So thank you!
t smith says
Editor,
Thank you for putting a side to this gentleman that probably would have gone untold. He will no longer be thought of as the “homeless man” that passed on in the park. He will be (to me) the gentleman who used to operate a printing press back in the day. And you are right. What about them???
Carol Brown says
Editor,
Thank you for this informative and compassionate article.
Carol Droge says
Editor,
Thank you Jim for your compassionate sharing of a little of Charlie’s life. Too often we forget that the chronically homeless probably had a “prior life” with which we can identify. Who would think to ask a homeless alcoholic “What do you do?” Also many thanks to Bill for all he does to advocate for our community. We are happy he has recently joined the Board of Samaritan Group to help address the problem of homelessness in Kent County.
Steve Payne says
Editor,
I agree, Thanks to you and Billy for what you did and continue to do.
Harvey Wigder says
Editor,
This is a beautiful story about a sad event. It was inspired of you to ask him what he did and a miracle that you brought him back to a more productive and happy past before his death. Chestertown is lucky to have a writer of your caliber on the Spy.
Nathan Dudley says
Editor,
Survived by a son and daughter in Rock Hall. There must be more to explore beyond “A Death In Fountain Park”!
Bryan Paul says
Editor,
I shed a lot of tears last night when i heard of this….not only for him but for everyone struggling with alcoholism/addiction. I knew him from the Easton area. He had lived in the same recovery house that i spent a year in, he wasn’t living there when i was but the folks who run the place loved him dearly. He was the nicest guy. I could write a book on this subject but i will just say (this isn’t necessarily referring to Mr. Charlie) that i am dear fiends with and regularly hang out with people who used to be…. homeless … down and out… hopeless…”lowlifes”… “scumbags” …thieves …prostitutes …felons …criminals… etc etc. And now they’re not. They are joyful…productive … dignified … honorable …successful …spiritual etc etc. And it is because somewhere, at some point, they were given Hope… a glimmer of light and a way out of a disease so powerful that most can not overcome it on their own and purse it to the gates of insanity or death. There are ways out that can be shared with people.
Sarah Lyle says
Editor,
You can write self-congratulatory purple prose op-eds and people again may express shock and surprise to hear of a homeless person dying in their midst, but very few among us actually stir from our Internet pseudo-activism to do. Fall towards helping our brothers and sisters in need; people battling mental illness, addiction, poverty or oppression. Dialogue is fine and good, but action and financial support will go further.
Kate Gallagher says
Editor,
Dialogue, and yes, even “purple prose,” can be the catalysts for action and financial support. Sure, a lot of people read a story like this, and go back to their own diversions after a moment’s reflection or comment — but if even just one person does something after reading it, that’s a good thing. A story, especially one as respectfully and beautifully told as this one, is often effective at informing and motivating people to “do something” . So rather than kill the messenger, spread the message.
Elizabeth Glenn says
What a well written beautiful story. Thank you for this heart warming,yet heartwrenching story about Charlie Hawkins. To think ,you spent his last minutes on this earth with him and were able to bring him back to reality a little bit. What you did not mention and I will is that Charlie was a father and grandfather. I heart just aches for his son and daughter as they lost their mother about a month ago and now their dad. Both parents in about a month.who would have ever thought that years ago when people were there for each other and rock hall and Chestertown were such tight knit communities, that we would see one of our own be homeless and actually die in the streets( park) .this the stuff u hear on television,on the news. Sadly,I might add. With the summer heat approaching,we should be on the look out for the homeless. Offer them a couple bucks to go into an air conditioned mcdonalds or Taco Bell….somewhere to get out of the staggering heat,and het a cold soda or water. Jus maybe now that this tragedy has been brought to the front line,our local residents will pay a little more attention to those less fortunate…
James Dissette says
Editor note: I received this email this morning in regard to Charlie:
Charlie worked work for me at a fundraising event I coordinated, and he worked for a short period as the sexton for Trinity Cathedral on Goldsborough Street. He touched our lives and we’d really like to know how to reach his family or to know of any memorial/burial service that may occur.
Any help you can provide in connecting us to plans or with family/friends would be really appreciated and helpful.
Thanks,
Kelley Malone
410-829-1685
Pat Grussing says
https://www.fhnfuneralhome.com/obituaries/Charles-Hawkins-3/
David Foster says
Editor,
Thank you for the article on Charlie and for helping to make the challenges he faced more visible to all of us.
As it happens, I walked across that park just 10 minutes before the ambulance arrived and Charlie and his problems were all too invisible to me.
Lisa Biggar says
Editor,
We are all connected by that silver thread, so that every death should affect us in some way. If not, we have lost our connection with the infinite. How wonderful that Charlie was given the gift of laughter, one of the things that brings us all together, just before he died.