Vendor Mark Read Passes

West Side Market Vendor Dies on Friday

Mark Read had sold the paper for years including both the Grapevine and the Street Chronicle, and was a previous staff member at University Settlement.  He died on Friday evening after attending our every other week vendor meeting and after working his shift at the West Side Market on Friday March 2nd in the afternoon.  His wake will be on Thursday at Golubski Funeral Home in the the afternoon.  We believe that Mark died after a fall down the stairs, but we could not find a death notice in the paper to link to this story. We do not have an official cause of death at this time. He had just gotten over a sickness that had kept him away from selling the paper, but he was back last week.   Mark was always quiet and respectful to customers and other vendors.  He did write a story which will appear in the next issue of the paper.  He had a rough time in life with lots of struggles to overcome.   

Brian
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Update on Street Newspaper

We are Close to Publishing

The poets have been able to get close to the $1,000 mark, and we are starting to make plans for publishing this fall. We are collecting stories, poetry and photos for the Grapevine or whatever the new paper will be called. The poets put together a blog entry explaining their efforts to support the street newspaper. If you want to help, NEOCH is accepting donations to help with the paper. You can donate directly from our website or send us a check. Please send donations to:

NEOCH/Homeless Grapevine
3631 Perkins Ave #3A3
Cleveland, Ohio 44114

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Arthur Price Sr Passes

Hard Working Vendor Joins Wife

We have had to put the Grapevine on hold while we fund raise, and get our own house in order. Arthur Price Sr. was a vendor of the Grapevine for years outside of the West Side Market. He saw many in his family die of cancer including his own mother. He wanted to stay busy so he started selling the paper in his 70s. I guess that he saw a number of relatives retire, and then pass on quickly. Arthur was determined to stay active, and sold the Grapevine through his latest illness in 2009. He passed away last week and his memorial service was Saturday.

Arthur was a stern and gruff old guy similar to many men born in the 1920s. He was hard on many people, but he was a good salesman. He loved working for the Grapevine, and he told me every few weeks that the Grapevine saved his life. He said that it forced him to get up and go outside. He had a purpose and that was to sell papers. He loved meeting people at the Market and loved interacting with the other vendors, the customers, and the WSM workers. Behind his rough exterior, the one soft spot was for his wife. Just as Bernadette Janes described in the 2006 article in the Homeless Grapevine newspaper, Arthur loved his wife, Clarabelle. She passed away in January, and this made it difficult for Arthur. He had moved to hospice care, and could not move around for the last four months.

The family asked the Chaplin from the Hospice Care Center to conduct the service. This was unusual since she had only four months of interaction with Arthur to pull together the ceremony. It worked really well in that she was not deeply emotionally attached to Mr. Price, and had sat with him and talked about what he wanted in the service. So she presented the facts that Arthur wanted to pass on to all of us. She talked about the Grapevine, his family and the love for his wife. She thanked the people that Arthur wanted thanked, and she mentioned that there were a few fragile people within the family that Arthur wanted to make sure were taken care of. The Chaplin was clear that Arthur had joined his wife, and was at peace at this point. It was a very nice service that Cathy, one of our other vendors, attended on behalf of the Homeless Grapevine.

Brian
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Gary Waterbeck Passes

Photo by Cindy Miller of Gary Waterbeck

Photo Grad and Union Carpenter

Gary Waterbeck passed away this morning. For long time readers of the Homeless Grapevine or this blog, you will remember Gary from the 2007 Grapevine photo project. Gary was a strong, quiet and reserved gentleman who had struggled with health issues. Gary came to NEOCH asking for help from people who were harassing him at his campsite. He did not want to live in the shelters in Cleveland for many different reasons, and felt that he could get off the streets on his own. He met a friend of ours, Cindy Miller, who was helping us work on improving the shelters in Cleveland . I talked to Cindy about how we remember Gary, and she wanted to make sure that he was remembered for more than just the stereotypical issues facing a homeless guy in Cleveland. There is no such thing as a typical homeless person, but Gary was not even a typical man.

Gary was a union carpenter who wasn't working due to the cutbacks in construction work in Cleveland. Some of the large construction projects he worked on included schools, assisted living facilities and the Lerner Institute at the Cleveland Clinic. He did independent contracting work but lost that income due to someone stealing his van and all his tools. He had cut his insurance down to liability coverage. The day after he arrived at the men's shelter he got a job selling hot dogs at the corner of Ontario and Superior. He often worked through temp agencies on assembly lines and even power washing at Jacobs Field. He and a group of other men chose to sleep in a camp rather than at the shelter because by the time they finished work and got back to be transported to the overflow shelter at Aviation High School they missed meals or there was not enough food or they missed the shuttle bus. Often they did not feel safe at the overflow site at Aviation. Gary then traveled down to New Orleans in 2005 to help with the recovery efforts.

Cindy felt safer with Gary than she did in the shelters and they started hanging out together. Gary became disabled as the result of an injury he sustained while in New Orleans helping with the clean up after Hurricane Katrina. A group of men from the shelters and men who were no longer in the shelter went to aid in the cleanup. In 2006, they found a place together in East Cleveland and then a house in Toronto , Ohio . Both joined the photography project taught by Steve Cagan at NEOCH, and both successfully graduated the program. My favorite images captured by Gary are below.

In the past few months he was feeling well enough to be independent again and was active in the newly formed Toronto (Ohio) Coalition for Revitalization. He had helped in negotiating a donation of paint and supplies for a newly started project of the coalition. Gary and Cindy fought the crushing federal bureaucracy, crazy state government rules, and small town politics over the last two years. They also had to struggle with the bizarre American health care system. Gary was diagnosed with cancer in the summer of 2009. His death was the result of pneumonia. He had received months of chemotherapy that drastically reduced the tumor in his throat. Gary waged a valiant battle to conquer this latest challenge in his life. Gary Waterbeck passed away early this morning, and our heart goes out to his family and to Cindy. Please keep him in your thoughts.

Brian with help from Cindy
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Photos by Gary Waterbeck 2007

Last Week

A Few Notes from Last Week

The Homeless Grapevine has been offline for three months. We finally went to press and will publish a new issue next week. 15 pages packed full of good stuff. I believe that it will be out on Wednesday at the West Side Market and Downtown. It has been a rough couple of months trying to scrape by with no money.

We finally got word why CynDe was not posting at her blog. Her partner, Gary, has been sick and she has been caring for him. Gary is a graduate of the photography program also. Please keep him in your thoughts. They have struggled in this economy like the rest of us.

There was an interesting Office of Homeless Services "Advisory Board" with the county staff presenting a Blueprint for how to use the homeless prevention money. This may seem strange since the applications for the use of those funds were due nearly two months ago, but we hope that all the partners come together in the best interest of the homeless people.

There was a public meeting with staff from Fannie Mae staff to answer questions about their new efforts to stem the tide of foreclosures in the United States. We talked about the new rules regarding foreclosures and especially with regard to renters. This law went into effect in May, and everyone is just learning what it means for homeowners and renters. We still could use a moratorium on foreclosures in the state of Ohio even with the new federal law.

Finally, on Thursday we had a good Homeless Congress meeting with representatives from six area shelters. The group decided to ask every candidate for City Council to support the regulations of the shelters in the next session of City Council. As soon as the letter is sent out and we start getting them back we will release the names of the candidates who support such legislation. The Congress also requested a moratorium on the co-pay fee that MetroHealth is charging until the flu pandemic passes.

Brian
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New Grapevine Hits the Streets this Week

A Taste of the Upcoming Grapevine

The Homeless Grapevine #85 is now at the printers, so it will be hitting the street in a matter of days! In it, we have an update on North Point at the 6 month mark, a tribute to Anthony Waters who was killed, an interview with a vegan who has been through the shelter system, a large section devoted to the photographs taken by graduates of NEOCH’s photography class, and much more. Just to give you a taste, here’s part of a feature on Grapevine vendor Raymond Jacobs by Bernadette Janes:

"Before Raymond Jacobs became a vendor for the Homeless Grapevine, his varied careers were packed into his one lifetime like pieces of an old southern parlor game. It all started in 1947 in New Orleans, Louisiana, with an Ethiopian mother and a white German-Jewish father. Growing up in the South half black and half white was not easy. Within the multiple hues of that population, Raymond was categorized as Creole.

After finishing high school, Raymond and six buddies, all of them seventeen years of age, celebrated their freedom by going on a fateful lark. Swilling down quarts of cheap wine, they ran, screaming, through startled neighborhood, and suddenly found themselves in front of a Marine Corps recruiting office. Deeply inebriated, they decided it might be fun to drop in and visit a while. With the Vietnam war going on at the time, the group of robust seventeen-year-olds looked like fresh meat to the Recruiting Officer on duty.

He welcomed them in and immediately began pouring Jack Daniels whiskey into them, regaling them with promises of fantastic benefits if they would enlist. By the time they started for home, they understood nothing of the import of papers the recruiting officer thrust into their hands for their parents to sign. All the parents signed the papers readily and sent them in. Days later, stone sober and realizing the depth of the hole they had fallen into, the boys tried to get the papers back, but with no success.

They were now United States Marines!"

To read the rest of this article and much more, please pick up a copy of the Homeless Grapevine issue #85 from any of our registered vendors!

Josh

Posts by Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless staff and Board.

Homeless Coalition Updates

Photo appearing in the new Grapevine #84 by 2008 Photography student Cheryl Jones.

After Four Months--Grapevine is Available

The Grapevine was forced to take a break, but we are back on track. We have a bunch of new vendors and the new paper is out. Available downtown, and at the West Side Market. We had to take a break and re-group, but things are looking good. There are some great photos in the new paper from students taking the 2008 Photo class. There are stories about North Point Shelter, and a few stories about homelessness across America. There is one interesting story about the City of San Francisco passing a shelter standards bill. The Grapevine has a few sad stories about hate crimes in Ohio and those who had passed away in 2007. Check it out.

We had a nice Teach In this week. The next Teach In is set for September 16, 2008 and will focus on voting and identification issues at 5:30 p.m. We will have an ability to RSVP on our website in June.

The new Street Cards are out and available on our website. We have distributed 4,000 so far. Thanks to University Hospital for printing this year's Street Card. In case you are not familiar this is a one page piece of paper that lists all the services available to homeless people right from the streets. We have published 18 updates of the street cards over the years.

HousingCleveland.org saw a huge increase in users over the last month. This must have something to do with the large number of foreclosures in Cleveland, but the housing search website saw over 1,700 more searches done this year over last. We have doubled the number of unique users from the same period as last year. In the last month, 6,517 unique users made over 50,000 searches on the website--a new record.

In a similar story, the Plain Dealer covered the story today of the dramatic increase in homeless children using the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. We are so lucky to have Project ACT in our community. Imagine everything in your world collapses including your housing, but Project ACT is there to make sure that your school situation does not have to change.

Brian
Posts by Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless staff and Board.