Once Nameless, Homeless, Now He’s Gone

‘Yes, what else but home?
It all depends on what you mean by home.
Of course he’s nothing to us, any more
Than was the hound that came a stranger to us
Out of the woods, worn out upon the trail.’
‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.’
––“The Death of the Hired Man” by Robert Frost
For the longest time, Timothy McCart was a just man in a wheelchair. He slowly moved along the sidewalk outside the Herald office along Route 47. I snapped some photographs of him in a blinding snowstorm as he made his way precariously across Route 47, fortunate to have made it to the other side.
At the time, he had no name, as far as countless passersby or I knew. Then, out of desperation, he stopped into the office lobby on a cold January afternoon.
Within a few moments, he was transformed from a nameless statistic into a homeless man who had feelings and who was crying for help. He told his story, it was sad indeed. Attired in much of what he owned, ragged clothes, he told what it was to be freezing outside in a tent, with icy feet and living, subsisting really, in the woods by a local trailer park. He wondered if his would be the next body pulled from those woods. He said he was told by a nearby motel manager to tell his story to the newspaper, perhaps that might help his situation.
He was not alone, he told me. There are many others, some in worse shape with addictions, cancer, addictions and other maladies that they were battling in solitude, he said. They need help, he noted, but just could not connect to get it. For them, help might well have been located on the moon.
“I don’t know how much longer I can stand it,” he said, gazing out the glass door. It seemed he wanted to linger inside where it was warm, with nothing particular to say. Inside was better than outside, even for a few brief minutes.
McCart died March 12 of injuries sustained March 11 when he was struck by a car as he crossed Route 47, just down the street from the Herald office. This was the place where, it seemed, he almost had a premonition of his demise.
Advocates for the homeless had given McCart a ride to the freeholders’ meeting March 10 where he addressed the board that oversees county Social Services. It was the third time the group’s members stood at the podium and told the plight of the homeless. McCart met with a representative of Social Services that night. Some said he was told to gather receipts for nights when he stayed in Route 47 motels, when it was unbearable to stay in his tent. Armed with that proof, McCart hoped to get a housing voucher, a start to a better future.
The last time I talked with McCart, about two weeks before his death, he was making his way, hand push by hand push in his wheelchair on the sidewalk oppose the Herald office. I had a message from a long-ago acquaintance of his who wrote to me after reading the Feb. 11 front-page story about McCart and the county’s homeless. The fellow said he might be able to give McCart shelter and possibly a lead for a job.
He thanked me for the Feb. 11 story. “People came up to me and said, ‘Boy you sure stirred up a bee’s nest with this one.’ Some wanted my autograph and others handed me money,” he said. McCart seemed to be warmed just a tad at the thought that it was through him that light was shed on the plight of his pals in the wilderness.
County officials had read about what it’s like to have no warm home as a retreat at day’s end when temperatures were bone-chilling, but perhaps not quite up to Code Blue standard. (That is when the homeless are to be placed indoors when the outdoor temperature is 32 degrees with precipitation and 25 degrees without. Try it sometime, stay outside in those temperatures, and see how long you can stand it.)
Government, that entity to which we surrender all things out of our domain, is saddled with so much there’s little caring for everyone all the time. Social services workers, overworked daily, don’t have the time to be passionate for everyone with a sad story. There are guidelines to meet, criteria that must be met to issue vouchers and different types of aid. Those stipulations are enough to make a well-adjusted person cringe. For many homeless, who may be suffering from illnesses or mental blocks, such criteria are foreboding to say the least.
We claim to be a caring people. In fact, we care so much that we fund a county-run, no-kill animal shelter for dogs and cats. Yet, we have humans, some with families, living in woods or in cars, and we collectively seem to believe that’s alright. Why? Because “the government” has programs to take care of them. Well, sometimes programs, well-intended, fall short, as McCart told us. Cold is cold, as he well knew.
McCart’s troubles are over. I believe he is in a far superior place, out of harm’s way. His friends remain among us. If his life and death meant anything, let it be an awakening to the real needs of our fellow beings. They may be unkempt, perhaps they suffer from addictions or illnesses, they may look scary until we talk to them, learn their names, hear their stories. Then they, like McCart, are transformed from a statistic into a fellow human who needs food, shelter and love, just as much as you and I.
Tim, rest well, on that farther shore.