Homeless man's service a poignant reminder of value of life

Pat Schneider  â€”  7/14/2009 8:53 am

A dozen people gathered Friday to mark the passing of Dwayne Warren: two from a time before life led him to the streets of Madison, a few who reached out across the gulf of fate or failings beyond which the homeless live, and others who learned who he was only after his death last month on a Capitol Square bench.

They stepped forward to share reminiscences tinged with regret, tearful expressions of loss, a serene account of a chance last meeting. Their testimony to the deep impressions left by someone whose personal warmth lifted him from the invisibility of his circumstances became a poignant affirmation of the value of every life.

The memorial service at First Congregational United Church of Christ, 1609 University Ave., is the first of an organized effort to provide a space to affirm the lives and grieve the passing of Madison's homeless. The idea is beginning to catch on as leaders of communities of faith recognize it as a way to proclaim the humanity of both the homeless and the people whose lives they touch.

Members of FISH -- Fighting Impoverishment and Stopping Homelessness -- a coalition of advocates formed in response to scapegoating of the homeless, raised the idea several months ago of local faith communities hosting memorial services for the homeless, says Linda Ketcham, executive director of Madison-area Urban Ministry.

"Too often when someone who is homeless dies, there is no commemoration of their life, no celebration of their passing," Ketcham says. Family members may be unable to afford a funeral, live far away, or be estranged, so that it falls to a community to honor the death of one of its members. "Simply because someone didn't have a permanent roof over their head doesn't mean they are less valuable."

Michael Stoops, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless in Washington, D.C., says that an anonymous death is common for homeless people.

"Many times I'm the only person who gets calls to identify bodies at the medical examiner's office. But it's important to be able to pay final respects even if someone is known only as the 'homeless lady on the corner' and no one knew their name."

Stoops' organization sponsors a national memorial day each Dec. 21 for homeless people; last year 125 cities took part with candlelight vigils for homeless who died that year.

The June 16 death of Warren, 38, in what may be Madison's most public place, drew immediate expressions of sorrow from people who had come to know him as they passed him by each day, and advanced the talk about memorials to action.

The Rev. Eldonna Hazen says she and the board of directors at First Congregational did not hesitate to offer to host Warren's service. The cost to the church was minimal, and hosting the memorial was a small but significant act, she says.

"We should all be of equal value in God's creation," Hazen says. "We wouldn't think twice about having a service for anyone else in the community. Other than celebrating the life of the individual, there are people he touched, people who walked by Dwayne every day and got a smile, people who he huddled on the grate with who were touched by his life. For us to say this person wasn't of value just isn't accurate."

The memorial service did not focus on the circumstances by which Warren became homeless. "All of us have things in our pasts we are not proud of," Hazen remarked to the group.

Warren did several stints in the Dane County Jail starting in the late 1990s, most for disorderly conduct convictions associated with domestic violence, according to the state's court records website, which also lists a misdemeanor drug possession conviction.

Martha Pickens recalled Friday how she and Warren wound up in Madison in 1997 after leaving Chicago in search of a new start. They found jobs and an apartment and were building a life, but split after a couple of years. "I always wanted to see him again after we separated, but I didn't know where he was. I had to come today and at least pay my last respects."

Warren's mother still lives in Chicago, according to Pickens. She was not at the memorial service. Neither was there anyone there who described themselves as homeless.

Doreen Shannon knew Pickens and Warren when they were together and in later years occasionally would see him on the streets in the downtown area. She ran into him the night before he died. "We laughed and talked," she recalls. Warren told her he had met someone who was going to help him get cleaned up and into culinary school -- and he was a good cook, she says. "I would have liked for him to live his dream, but the last time I saw him he had a smile on his face."

Among the people Warren got to know from his stops along a route that stretched from the GEF state office buildings east of the Capitol Square to the Badger Bus depot west of the Square were several who tried to help him "clean up." The depth of emotion with which they recalled him speaks, perhaps, to the power of opening up to someone more likely to be ignored and avoided.

Those who reached out to Warren say he turned aside suggestions to connect with a homeless services program to get shelter and other assistance. They settled for bringing him food or soft drinks and items of clothing.

Attorney Todd Hunter bought Warren the jumpsuit he wore day after day. "That was all he wanted for Christmas," mused Hunter, who described Warren as a sweet, gentle and handsome man with a smile that "reminded us to love one another."
"He has changed me and changed my heart," a tearful Hunter says. There should have been something else he could have done to help him, he insists.

Transit van driver Mike Roach last winter helped Warren get the boots Roach says he was wearing when he died. He fears the boots' insulating properties exacerbated an untreated leg infection that Roach believes killed Warren. (Dane County Coroner John Stanley says Warren died of natural causes but no specific cause of death has yet been determined.) Roach's guilt over not taking the time to figure out what was wrong when Warren complained of leg pain, then said he would walk it off, is palpable. "I have to live with that," he says.

One woman said she didn't know his name but had come to look forward to Warren's friendly greeting every day on her way to work. One morning last month she was so distracted as she walked that she stumbled and fell hard. "A woman stepped around me, she didn't ask if I was OK or try to help me," she said. She was so shaken by the fall that she didn't learn until later that the commotion up the block was from the discovery of Warren's body. "If Dwayne had been there," she tearfully told fellow mourners, "he would have helped me up."

Wendy Cooper, social justice coordinator at First Unitarian Society in Madison, says that congregation will be part of the local faith communities hosting memorials for homeless people.

Warren's death made Madison aware of his life, "but homeless people should not have to die to be recognized," she says.

There was something about Warren that bridged the gap that often separates the homeless from the rest of us, that lets us forget that "the homeless are human beings just like us," Cooper says. "Dwayne was a caring human being -- that's what drew people to him."

And it leaves the people who cared about him haunted by the feeling they should have done more.

Homeless burial fund eliminated

As of July 1, the Dane County program that most likely would have been tapped to pay for funerals and burials of homeless people ceased to exist.

Last year, the county budgeted $63,000 for a program that assisted in disposing of the remains of indigent, mostly single, adults, says Liz Green, administrator of economic assistance for the Dane County Department of Human Services.

The program provided $1,000 each for funeral services and burial and was a remnant of the old general relief program that assisted single adults. The program was ended, as mandated by ordinance, when the state eliminated the block grant that helped pay for it. The program assisted in final arrangements for 30 or more people a year, and demand often exceeded funding, Green says.

A separate state program provides the county with $440,000 in funding for funerals and burials of people enrolled in Medicaid or BadgerCare, but those programs serve families, the disabled and the elderly, and single adults typically don't qualify, Green says. "A lot of homeless people are not part of those programs."

The county's plan is to try to get such people approved for those programs "retroactively after they're dead," she says. "We've checked with other counties statewide and that's how they're managing these kinds of costs."

Pat Schneider  â€”  7/14/2009 8:53 am