This is how we came to know Rich, a freckled guy with an honest smile who pulled his sleeves down over his hands and sat outside our favorite Mexican spot for Sunday morning huevos rancheros over the Times. On the weekends we walked that stretch of city block, Bryce would give Rich the rest of his beans and tortillas, or his half a sandwich, or he would stop, shake Rich’s hand, and hear what incident from the streets had pushed Rich further down that week. Over time Bryce stopped for longer, and would tell me he’d catch up and then come home to tell me, “Rich said that I have a really great wife,” which immediately made me think that I should stop to chat the next time.
Bryce gave Rich a few minor loans, got him a cell phone with an initial contract, and when Rich was trying to get off the junk, offered him a shower in our apartment and a phone number as a job contact to some brothers we knew who renovated Victorians. As the realist in situations such as these, I sat in my room while Rich spent an hour fogging up the bathroom mirror, and then felt guilty when we sent him back on the streets armed with some of our blankets and a pillow.
We eventually lost touch with Rich, and when Bryce died earlier this year, Bryce’s mom chose The Coalition on Homelessness as a place for friends to donate money in his name. After those initial months of shock, I told my two best friends that I wanted to make healthy brown bag lunches, include a poem I had written about Bryce’s passing, and hand them out to homeless people on the street as a way of honoring Bryce. I wanted to create my own volunteer program, a way of giving back to a cause that Bryce made a point to be involved in, but visions of Health Department inspectors and police officers entered my mind. My friends researched and found a place in the city that served the kind of food that Bryce loved to cook, and that was mostly vegetarian. It was important to us that we could prepare and serve the healthy food that we would eat ourselves.
