A Chance Meeting and a Journey to Housing

It was 14 years ago when I attended my first Consumer Advisory Board (CAB) meeting. There were several CAB members at Community Health Link then, most of whom have now passed away. Calvin was one of them. He was an African American guy, really tall and thin, in his sixties.

Calvin was just a good guy and always made me feel welcome. He really encouraged me to get involved locally and was so proud of me for the work that I ended up doing nationally. He was just a really good man, you know?

I don’t know much about his story of homelessness, but addiction may have played a role. He was born in 1946, grew up in Worcester, played high school basketball.

When I met him, he’d been housed for years through Community Health Link. He received services there while homeless and then got housed. Later they opened a house for the men’s program, and he became the house manager and lived there. He was very connected to the men in that program, and they really thought of him as a mentor and would go to him for advice.

Portrait of a Man

He was a very funny guy—and subtle. He would just all of a sudden say something, and you’re like, “Did he just say that?” I’ll tell you a funny story: we had another CAB member—John—and he got a scholarship to come to the [National Health Care for the Homeless] conference. It was going to be John, Calvin, and myself, and I came in a little earlier.

John had never flown before, but Calvin and he were going together. He was very nervous about flying, so once I got to there I asked them how it went—and I found out that the plane had gotten diverted to Canada! I’m like, “Oh, my goodness, of all things. This poor guy has never flown before and the plane gets diverted to Canada.” So before they left to come home, I said “Listen, I don’t want to get back to Worchester and find out you guys got diverted to Hawaii, because I’m gonna be really upset!” We just kept talking about that story.

He was also a photographer. It was just something that he really loved to do. He had a nice camera, and he was always doing candid shots of homeless people in the community, sleeping in doorways and otherwise. Mostly in black and white. It truly was a passion of his to go out and capture those images.

He really made a big impression on a lot of people’s lives, and I feel like he saved a lot of people. He was such an advocate for people to get services. He had several health issues that he was dealing with, but he was very involved in promoting the services of Community Health Link and so was always out there in the city talking to people. A lot of the CAB members we had over the years were because of Calvin.

The Service He Couldn’t Attend

He always helped to put together our Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day service. It was on December 21^st that he was going to meet me at the church to set up refreshments, and he didn’t come. It wasn’t like him to not be on time. The service went on without him, and then we got a phone call before we left the church.

Nobody had heard from him that day, and I believe it was one of his daughters that went to his apartment and found him. He died in his sleep—probably from a heart attack. He had some heart issues and may have had diabetes. There had been some addiction issues in the past, too, but he had been sober for many years.

It was just heartbreaking when we found this out.

It just wasn’t like Calvin not to be somewhere he said he was going to be, so we knew something was up—but of course we didn’t expect that. People were pretty devastated. We always mention him at our service every year, and after he passed, they renamed that men’s program Bradshaw Manor in his honor.

We just lost a CAB member last Friday, and so we’re down to four CAB members. We’re going to have to think about recruiting new members. And it’s always hard. That was a sudden thing—we didn’t expect that, so it’s really hard when those kinds of things happen, when you lose people that you see on a regular basis. It’s hard to not see those folks at the table anymore, you know?

I’m always struck by our Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day services [like the ones we did with Calvin]. We always have someone that gets up and shares their story… and the room gets silent. Because when you see a person, you don’t know what they’ve struggled with, but when they tell that story people are just struck by people’s resilience, their determination to overcome homelessness.

And that’s the story I tell people—that this is just one little piece of your story, of your journey. You can get through and overcome this, and look back, and it makes you stronger. I know it made my family stronger to go through something like that.

Calvin had a family, too—his ex-wife and children all live here. He remained really close to his ex-wife. She’s a patient here at the health center, so I see her—not often, but I do see her—and she belonged to a church in Worchester, Mt. Sinai. Every year the bishop would allow us to use that church for the Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day service, and she always arranged that for us. He was very, very close to his girls, and they come to the service every year. Family members often represent people who have passed.

They represent him now.

“It’s not easy living outside. People don’t understand how hard it is to get access to food, clean water, being able to wash your clothing, and just to sit and rest. At most shelters you’re asked to leave in the morning, and then unless there’s a day program of some sort, [you’re] wandering around all day long trying to find a place to go to the bathroom or rest. And with the criminalization of homelessness, people are being asked to get off the benches, not sit on the sidewalks, and not be in the parks.

It’s made it harder and harder for people to be out there, especially in New England where I am, where the temperatures get very cold and people die just from being out in the elements. It’s heartbreaking.

I think people need to know that even though it may not have affected them, they may know someone who it has affected. I never thought I would be homeless, but it happened. It was for circumstances out of our control, but there’s lots of reasons people can find themselves in that situation. I think people just need to be observant and kind and understand that we’re all people, and we all deserve a home and good health care.

That’s someone’s child, that’s someone’s father… I always try to think of it that way when I hear about programs being protested against. I think, “If my daughter was addicted to drugs and needed help, I would hope that there would be a program that could help her.” People need to think of it in a different way: that even though it doesn’t directly affect them or their children, there are other people that struggling with this.” – Amy Grassette

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