by Kathy Izard
It took Dale, Liz, Caroline, and Chilly Willy’s brother, Johnny, to convince Charlotte’s most famous street person that this wasn’t a trick. Moore Place wasn’t a jail or a lock-down facility but truly a home of his own. It happened that his move-in date would be Valentine’s Day 2012.
That morning Caroline was on high alert as she waited to welcome Chilly Willy home, finally fulfilling the promise that Moore Place could successfully house Charlotte’s own Million-Dollar Larry. As the day wore on, no one saw him. Caroline called Johnny to see if he knew where Chilly Willy was, but it seemed he had gone missing.
Had Chilly Willy really forgotten about the big day? Or had he just decided he couldn’t come inside to live?
Finally, late in the afternoon, Caroline spotted Chilly Willy in the parking lot. She went outside to meet him and was surprised to find him completely sober.
He announced he had checked himself into the city “drunk tank” to clean up for his momentous day. And one more thing—he was no longer Chilly Willy. He told Caroline that from this day forward, he was giving up his street name, and he wanted everyone to call him by his birth name: William Larry Major.
A couple of weeks later Liz Clasen-Kelly handed me a note from Larry. To this day I carry his letter with me, along with a group photo of the first thirteen Homeless to Homes residents. Both are tucked in the front pocket of my black meeting notebook.
Ms. Kathy Izard
I’m William Larry Major. Will you come visit me?
I’m doing good and I feel much better. I love my place, I feel like people now.
Thanks you’er [sic] friend,
William L. Major
Also among the new residents was soup kitchen cowboy Bill Halsey and his brown leather hat. Bill was that kind cowboy who had stood up for me in the soup kitchen and lived in his hole in the ground for years. We were thrilled to be able to give Bill a home finally, but it turned out that wasn’t the best part of his move into Moore Place.
For years Bill’s mother had been praying about him. She did not know how to help her homeless son or even where to find him, but she knew he got meals and mail at the UMC. Along with praying, she wrote to him at the center’s address.
When Bill found out he was going to be housed at Moore Place, he proudly called his mom to let her know. Mrs. Halsey was there for her son’s move-in day with tears in her eyes.
“I always prayed this day would come,” she confessed to Caroline. “I followed the stories about Moore Place in the newspaper and hoped one day my son would find his way here.”
What dear Mrs. Halsey didn’t admit was that she had done more than pray and send letters to her son.
Even after Moore Place was built, the pastel envelopes from our Mailbox Angel kept coming with notes of encouragement and the words May God Bless and Multiply this small amount. Now they were addressed to the Moore Place mailbox instead of the UMC, yet there we still had no way to thank the giver personally. Caroline would record the contributions as I had under Anonymous, wondering who our long-time benefactor might be.
Then one day, after receiving another Angel envelope, Caroline noticed something different—maybe a mistake. This time in the top left-hand corner of the pastel envelope there was a name: Lily Halsey.
Caroline couldn’t wait to call. “Kathy, you are not going to believe this. Our Mailbox Angel is Bill Halsey’s mom!”
I had not talked to Ron Hall since I sent him the photos from the grand opening, so I was surprised to see his number on my cell phone two months later, April 1, 2012.
“Hey, Ron!” I said.
“Kathy, Denver died last night in his sleep.”
I couldn’t even process what Ron said. Everything I knew about Denver had been so otherworldly; I think I assumed he was immortal.
The last time I had seen Denver was March 6, 2008. Four months after that first True Blessings, our founding team—Sarah, Kim, Angela, and I—decided to take a trip to Texas to visit Ron and Denver. At the time I was just starting my new job at the UMC, and I wanted to see what kind of beds they had in Denver’s hometown. We were excited to spend time with Ron and Denver again and tour the Fort Union Gospel Mission they had written about in their book. We arranged a dinner with the two of them, but when we arrived at the restaurant, only Ron was waiting. Denver, as customary, was nowhere to be found.
“He’ll be along,” Ron promised.
Ron filled the dinner hour with stories of the past year and all the places they had spoken.
“We’ve been approached for a movie deal!” he told us. “Denver wants Forest Whitaker to play him!”
Dinner progressed, entrees arrived and were cleared, but Denver hadn’t come. Angela’s right leg shook nervously as she checked her watch and stared at the restaurant entrance, willing Denver to arrive.
“Ron, we really wanted to see Denver again and hear all his wisdom!” Sarah confided.
Ron tried Denver’s cell phone several times but got no answer.
The evening was coming to a close, and we thought Denver was going to stand us up. When Denver finally made his grand entrance, he looked like a movie star dressed in a flashy new suit with pinstripes. He wore sunglasses even though it was 10:00 p.m. Restaurant guests obviously recognized the homeless man turned celebrity author, and many wanted to speak with him. Denver nodded at people and accepted handshakes from the most insistent fans.
Finally reaching our table, he shook his head, telling us, “I don’t understand why they all want to shake my hand now. None of them wanted to touch me when I was homeless.”
Denver held court with us for the next hour, telling stories and throwing out Denverisms:
Our limitation is God’s opportunity. When you get all the way to the end of your rope and there ain’t nothin’ you can do, that’s when God takes over.
Sarah brought out a small notebook and pen and tried to transcribe the circuitous philosophical mind of Denver Moore. Later we all flipped through the pages and agreed there was no way to do his musings justice. There was something about Denver that couldn’t be captured on paper. Being in his presence was undeniably remarkable. His words gave you goose bumps only when they were delivered with those dark eyes drilling into your soul.
I wondered what Denver saw with those eyes. Did he see like the rest of us, or could he see something different? Had Denver ever really even seen me, or, like Coleman, was I invisible? Was Denver ever really giving me, Kathy Izard, a message? Or, since “white folk look alike,” was he just speaking about the injustices of homelessness while I happened to be standing there, feeling responsible for something?
I may have had a four-year obsession to fulfill my promise to him, but I am convinced Denver Moore never knew my name—first or last. All the same, I would never forget him. Meeting Denver had triggered my spiritual awakening. It marked the beginning of my efforts to make everything previously invisible, indelibly visible. I had promised Denver I would build beds and promised myself I would finish before he died.
We had just made it.
The grand opening just before Denver’s death and Larry’s Valentine’s Day move-in would have been a Hollywood happy ending for this story. But real life is much messier.
Six months after Denver died, on October 19, 2012, I woke to an early morning text from Caroline sent late the night before: Larry is dead. Car accident on 7th Street. Will be convening staff early in a.m. Am in shock. Just leaving building.
I was in shock too. In the past twenty years, Larry, aka Chilly Willy, had survived prison, muggings, illness, heat waves, and ice storms. I remembered Johnny telling me about the regular phone calls from friends asking if Chilly Willy was dead because they hadn’t seen him on the streets in a while. Always the rumors were untrue—not this time.
I called Caroline immediately.
“I thought it was a mistake again, Kathy. You know how everyone always would say he had died, but we’d find out he was in jail or something?” Caroline was having trouble talking.
“But, this time, it’s true,” she finished.
William Larry Major, fifty-eight, was dead. A car outside a neighborhood bar had struck him. The driver was a sixty-five-year-old woman, undoubtedly traumatized but not charged.
Caroline sounded exhausted and shaky. Not only had she been fielding phone calls all night from distraught residents of Moore Place, she was blaming herself about how it could have played out differently.
“I’ve been trying to think what I could have done,” she said.
The truth was Caroline had, beyond all probability, kept Larry housed and very much alive for eight months. Many times after moving in, Larry had given his Moore Place apartment key to Caroline, saying he couldn’t do it anymore. Each time, she had given it back, assuring him he could.
I hung up with Caroline and searched the Internet, where it seems information about almost anything can be found. Larry’s death was no exception. I immediately located a Charlotte Observer news article, a blog post by a local writer, an RIP Chilly Willy Facebook page, and a YouTube video with a thousand hits and counting of Larry singing, all posted within hours of his death. I watched the video and smiled at Larry’s gravelly voice belting out his favorite Charlie Daniel’s Band song, “Long Haired Country Boy,” one last time.
My cell interrupted the video, and I saw it was Liz. I answered my phone with, “I heard,” and was surprised to find I could not speak without crying.
Liz was even more distraught. Her concern for Larry, whose addiction and pain played out publicly on Charlotte’s streets, had helped write the moral and economic case for Moore Place. His story of cycling needlessly in and out of jails and hospitals had inspired John and Pat Moore to call Dale with their extraordinary first gift for the pilot program in 2008. That had changed the lives of dozens of chronically homeless in Charlotte, including Coleman, Raymond, and Ruth and, finally, Larry himself.
At the end of our call, Liz made a comment I carry with me still. “When I saw in the paper that they wrote ‘formerly homeless,’ I took comfort in that.”
There was, as Liz said, mercy in Larry’s story. He hadn’t frozen under a bridge or been beaten to death. And while Larry was so proud to finally have his own place, he was still struggling with how to start a life for the first time in two decades.
In the days that followed, Charlotte overflowed with love for William Larry Major. Radio and TV stations ran stories, the Charlotte Observer wrote two feature articles, the online obituary guest book logged 294 entries, and that Facebook tribute page grew to more than ten thousand views. Larry, in his own wild way, had been a community talisman. People wrote of his humor, wisdom, and innate sweetness. They told of how he had offered a kind word, a song, or a joke. Apparently he was known in neighborhoods I didn’t even know he wandered.
Larry’s family held a service for him on October 22, 2012, in the church Larry’s father had started. Several hundred people stood in line outside the church to pay their respects. It was the most diverse crowd I had ever been with in Charlotte. Every age, every income, and every race was represented among the mourners, all patiently waiting to come inside the overflowing church.
While waiting in line, I stood beside a police officer, sheriff, EMT worker, and city bus driver, each recalling how the free-spirited Larry impacted their lives. At the front of the church were photos of Larry during his days at Moore Place: winning at Bingo, flashing a peace sign to the camera at a picnic. Two handmade posters had been signed by dozens of Moore Place friends, one poster reading, “Ride your Harley to Heaven! In Loving Memory.”
Larry’s family asked that memorials be made to Moore Place, and after the service they scattered Larry’s ashes on the streets of Charlotte—the place he loved the most.
twenty-five
GOD WAS IN IT
“WELL NOW YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT GOD,” said Owen Meany. “I CAN’T SEE HIM—BUT I ABSOLUTELY KNOW HE IS THERE!”
—John Irving1
Now I knew the ending to Denver’s and Larry’s stories, but I still couldn’t write the next chapter of mine. With Moore Place open I wasn’t really needed. I had no idea what to make of the last few years or what I should do for the next decade. If I was no longer Graphics Girl or Homeless to Homes director, who was I? What was I supposed to do with all this newfound knowledge about fundraising? If I had felt this one purpose so clearly, would there ever be another?
Allyson thought I could do some soul searching at her favorite retreat center, Kripalu, a former seminary turned yoga center in the Berkshires. She invited my mom and me to a workshop with English poet and philosopher David Whyte. I agreed to go even though I had never heard of him.
I had come prepared for the workshop with pen and paper, ready to absorb all David Whyte’s wisdom, but I was disappointed when he offered no handouts, no slides, and no PowerPoint presentations. It seemed there were no life lessons starred and highlighted in his lectures. If I was looking for takeaways, I was going to have to really listen and find them myself.
My attention drifted as the poet enigmatically recited his poems at the front of the large room, chanting really. It took me a few minutes to realize he was quoting everything from memory. He did not pause for effect in the natural places or even finish the entire work. He rolled through lines, stopping and starting like a dance instructor repeating steps. Then these lines from his poem “The Journey” brought me to full attention:
Sometimes everything
has to be
inscribed across
the heavens
so you can find
the one line
already written
inside you.
That was amazing.
I felt like this poet had pulled up a chair to my psyche and given me the CliffsNotes to my life. That one sentence described all the God-instances and serendipity and grace that began with a book and ended with an apartment building. But really that one sentence explained how a lost six-year-old who missed her mother could end up a resilient forty-nine-year-old able to believe she could do anything.
David Whyte continued with his poem, but I could not hear him. I just stared at the sentence I had jotted down in my notes as he spoke. I paused at his words about what was written in me. How did they get there, those metaphorical words inside me? Did it happen when my parents named me Katherine Grace, or did it start sooner, back when they were two college sweethearts reading scriptures to each other?
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.2
Their love had been bruised and broken and hospitalized and even parted by death, but Mom was still here. Still trying to learn at age eighty. Still listening to life. Still keeping over thirty years’ worth of “All my love, Leighton” cards bound tightly with a rubber band. I looked over at her. Mom’s hands were folded across her chest as she sat. She stared intently ahead, listening to the poet’s words.
Mom smiled imperceptibly as the poet spoke about “the ashes of life.” I knew she was thinking: the Phoenix. Her private symbol.
The Phoenix signifies the fabled purple bird that rises from the ashes after perishing in a fire of its own making.
Mom views her life, her story, similar to that of the Phoenix. She was able to withstand and survive all those fires of mania. My whole life I believed my foundations came mostly from my dad: do good, work hard, change the world. Throughout our lives, Dad had given each of his three daughters a compass to search for a bigger purpose. I had almost overlooked my mother’s quieter messages, which I needed for this journey maybe even more: faith and resilience. In truth, by recommending Same Kind of Different As Me, my mother had given me the key to my greatest gift—my calling.
My mom. The Phoenix. Rising from the ashes.
My childhood. My life. Perfectly imperfect, so I could finally see the one line that was already written inside me.
As I looked back on the journey of Moore Place, it seemed all the dots had been connected except one: Mrs. Ha
lsey. Caroline had met her but I never had. Thinking about all that had happened and all the God-instances, I needed to tell Lily Halsey that what she did had mattered—that a Hallmark card cradling a blessing and a few dollars had made all the difference to me.
Lily Halsey and her cards. My mom and her cards. My mom’s habit had always quietly irritated me. I couldn’t value it in my own mother until I could value it in someone else’s mother. This care. This connection. This compassion. It wasn’t a waste of time for Lily Halsey to send me all those cards. It had meant everything to me.
It wasn’t silly for my mom to track the birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays and send literally hundreds of cards a year. Thousands in her lifetime. It was her ministry.
I drove to Huntersville, North Carolina, to finally meet Lily Halsey, my mysterious Mailbox Angel, who now lived in an assisted living facility. A nurse helped me find her. She was sitting in a wheelchair by the front door, talking with a friend, and I came up behind her.
“Mrs. Halsey?”
A woman with soft gray hair turned to gaze up at me, two sky-blue eyes searching my face for recognition.
She clearly didn’t know me, but I would have known her anywhere. Those same blue eyes had looked up at me from under Bill Halsey’s cowboy hat any number of times.
I had brought her an orchid as a small offering of thanks, and I put it on the coffee table as I pulled out one of her notes that I had saved. I thought it might help explain my visit. This one read:
Thank you for your help and love for the HOMELESS and the needy. Pray that God will multify [sic] this small amount. Pray for me.
As I handed her the note, I could see she understood and remembered writing it. I tried speaking, “Mrs. Halsey, I’m Kathy Izard. You used to send me those notes—”
Mrs. Halsey’s friend interrupted. “You need to speak loudly, dear. She can’t hear well.”
I realized that Lily was still searching my face and had not heard a word. I leaned down close and put my words of gratitude right next to her ear.