Great news! Anthony’s greeting cards are now readily available online at Second Story Cards. He has some terrific cards. I’m really proud of Anthony and hope that people purchase his cards to help support him. Here are just a few…
Anthony is celebrating four years of housing tonight. As we’ve done the three previous years, we’re celebrating tonight at Rumors – it’s actually now called District Anchor. And not only are we celebrating the fact that Anthony has had a safe place to sleep and keep his belongings for the past four years, but it’s also his 60th birthday! Ok, so it’s actually Saturday, but we’re celebrating tonight.
Anthony turns 60 on July 29th.
If you are in the DC area, please stop by. We’ll be there from 5-8 and possibly later. It always draws an eclectic crowd. Even people who hardly know Anthony but have been touched by his story often stop by. It’s beautiful to watch.
If you are following along from some other part of the world, but want to wish Anthony well, please feel free to leave a comment here and I’ll be sure to pass the message along.
I’ll post some photos from the event later this week.
It’s been too long since I’ve updated you on Anthony. Since then, he’s recovered from the strokes he suffered at the beginning of 2016 and seems to be doing well. His speech is still not back to what it was before the strokes, but he is working on it.
I have some other cool news about Anthony. He’s been working with Second Story Cards to put out a series of greeting cards. Full disclosure, I started Second Story Cards, a greeting card company that gives men and women experiencing homelessness an opportunity to tap into their creative side and make fun, and occasionally, irreverent greeting cards.
For Anthony, this means a great deal. While he’s able to earn money selling the Street Sense newspaper, he’s just barely able to pay his rent, buy groceries and pay for other incidentals. Additional income would help him ensure that he is able to keep his apartment, and hopefully, some day move into an apartment with a private kitchen and bathroom – right now he shares those facilities with approximately 22 other men who live in a communal housing building.
Anthony’s first cards are shown below. The website is not fully up and running yet, but email us at sales@secondstorycards.com and we’ll help you out. Cards are $5 each, or $20 for 5. Stay tuned for more of Anthony’s cards!
Anthony and me after he was released from his first visit to the hospital this month.
Hello and Happy 2016!
The year has started off with both Anthony and me spending way too much time around doctors! I had a scheduled surgery to repair my labrum, the part that connects your bicep to the rotator cuff, on January 7th. It’s been almost three weeks and I am doing ok. I’m still in some pain, especially when I do my exercises but honestly it’s been way better than I thought. The biggest challenge, besides simply not being able to use my dominant arm, is sleeping. I have to sleep sitting up. I rented a recliner from Rent-A-Center (nightmare experience by the way) which has proved to be worth the pain of dealing with them.
Anthony has had much more critical issues. He has been hospitalized twice in the past two weeks. He suffered a stroke in his left parietal lobe. He was released about five days later and was doing ok until earlier this week when his speech worsened and he demonstrated a few other signs that the stroke was potentially progressing. I called 911 for him and he returned to the hospital where he has since been released. He is doing ok, but needs speech and physical therapy to help aid in his recovery. All of this was going on during Snowzilla to make matters more complicated.
Anyway, I continue to be in touch with Anthony daily and always pass along all the warm words of encouragement I receive from you. This has been a particularly hard month for him financially as well as he hasn’t been able to work most of the month due to hospital visits and recovery. If you would like to help him with this month’s rent, you can make a donation here.
Pope Francis visited Washington, D.C. a few weeks ago. It was a historic occasion. I even got a glimpse of the papal icon as he zipped by me in his little Fiat on my way to work. You can barely make him out in the far backside of the car.
Photo: Reed Sandridge
I thought that was pretty cool. When I told Anthony, he said, “I got to meet the Pope. He’s got soft and warm hands.” Yep, Anthony met the Pope at a luncheon that several homeless and formerly homeless men and women were invited to attend. Check out the photo he snapped from his phone and the article he wrote for Street Sense about the experience.
Photo: Anthony Crawford
Always on time, Anthony was waiting for me outside the Starbucks at 22nd and K. Wearing his black and gold Steelers hat and matching backpack, he greeted me with a giant bearhug. We stepped inside, grabbed a coffee and took over a table in the corner. We had about 40 minutes until he needed to be at his doctor’s appointment.
We made two bets. The first one was whether he weighed more or less than the last time he and I went to see his doctor which was last July. If he weighed less than his previous 276 pound weigh-in I would pay him a dollar. If he was more, he owed me a dollar. The second bet was about smoking. Anthony had quit for about a month, but admitted this morning that he had started up again. I bet him that the doctor would tell him that the number one thing he could to positively affect his health was to quit smoking.
Overall the doctor said Anthony was doing ok. His blood pressure was high, then again it always is, but his other lab work looked ok. Except for his sugar. Anthony has been diagnosed with Type II diabetes. He’s been on medicine now for two weeks and is working on avoiding foods that spike his sugar levels.
As we walked out we both had the same amount of money as we did when we walked in. Anthony had lost weight – he was down to 263 pounds. But the doctor in fact did tell him that quitting smoking would have the largest positive impact on his health.
We made another bet for his check-up in August. If Antony loses 8 pounds to reach 255 pounds, I will pay him $2. If he’s above 255 he owes me $2. But, I wanted to make it a little more interesting. I agreed that if he loses 15 pounds by the August check-up, then I’ll make it $100. That would be money well spent in that it would be a solid start on getting his weight under control.
Happy New Year! Time seems to go by so fast. I realized it had been an embarrassingly long time since I have updated the blog – not because Anthony & Me are not still meeting and working on things, but I just have been busy with other projects.
It is hypothermic here today, starting out at a painful 8 degrees this morning. I gave Anthony a call to make sure he was ok. “I ain’t going out in all that today,” he assured me. That’s probably wise. He ventured out yesterday though which wasn’t much better.
2015 is starting off pretty good for Anthony – check out this beautiful news story that was done about him and his journey to get housing. It ran today on the ABC Family Channel. Thanks to reporter John Jessup and videographer Denis Pacuraru of CBN News who did a terrific job with the story!
Looking back, 2014 was a decent year – a great year for Anthony. He celebrated one year of housing which is tremendous. I on the other hand have made some progress on my book, but not near where I had hoped.
As we look forward, Anthony and I are sitting down next Tuesday to talk about what we want to accomplish for 2015. I will post our goals after we meet – but I am pretty sure one of Anthony’s new goals is to try to visit his sister in Seattle this year! Not sure how we’ll do that financially at this point, but we’ll find a way. Oh, and he told me today that he has quit smoking?!!? Wow….that is HUGE! He hasn’t had a cigarette he said since Jan 2nd. “I’ve been chewing lots of nicotine gum – it helps.” I hope he can keep that up.
Anthony’s life changed on July 15, 2013 when he received the keys to an apartment in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington, DC. And while we celebrated that moment, we both knew that a hard road, possibly harder than the one we had just traveled, awaited us.
Anthony with friends at his one year celebration.
Recent numbers reported by David Berns of DC’s Department of Human Services show that 91% of people who were experiencing homelessness in the district and were rehoused remained in housing after one year. This gave me hope, but Anthony had been on and off the street for nearly 20 years. I was worried that he might be that one person out of ten that doesn’t make it.
Anthony and me
My worrying though was for nothing. Anthony worked hard to stay housed and we celebrated his one year anniversary on July 14th at Rumors – a restaurant across the street from where he has sold the Street Sense newspaper for the past nine years. About 40 people – friends, supporters, employees of local businesses, etc – showed up to celebrate with him. He didn’t stop smiling all night.
Today, July 29th, is Anthony’s 57th birthday. My wish for him today is that he stays housed and celebrates many more birthdays. Happy birthday Anthony!
Last week Anthony and I got together to talk with a reporter from Street Sense. They’re doing a story on the one-year anniversary of Anthony being housed. Pretty cool.
Anthony uses a personal hand-held battery-operated misting fan to stay cool – on his corner and on the 42 bus!
I got to Anthony’s corner at 19th and M earlier than we had agreed that day. We often meet at the Au Bon Pain next door, so I walked over there to see if he had slipped inside to escape the blistering sun. My intuition was right.
Sporting a broad smile and walking slightly better than the last time I saw him, Anthony was in good spirits. We boarded the 42 bus toward Metro Center and got off at 13th and H.
Stepping off the bus I saw some deep purple clouds forming above. “Did you bring an umbrella,” I asked Anthony. He smiled and not missing a beat quipped back, “Nope. Just a towel and a bar of soap.” Now we were both smiling.
We sat down with Sophie from Street Sense for the interview. We talked about how we got connected and a bit about the challenges of finding Anthony housing. I learned something new in the interview. No it wasn’t a new recipe from Anthony’s cooking repertoire, it was that he had been thinking about trying to finish his education and get his GED. I think that would be great if he wants to do that. He’ll need to work on his reading and writing (and probably arithmetic as well) though.
I’m taking him to the doctor on Wednesday, so I’ll have an update later this week. For those of you in DC, please join us on Monday, July 14th at 5:30pm at Rumors to celebrate Anthony’s one-year anniversary of securing housing.
It was a little more than 18 months ago that Anthony and I were meeting at Au Bon Pain on 19th Street. It was one of our regular biweekly meetings that we have. I had asked him during the previous get-together to think about where he wanted to be in one year or five years. “Don’t answer me now,” I told him. “Think about it and we’ll talk about it when we meet next time.”
Anthony and me on Nov. 27, 2012 when we started on our journey to get Anthony housing.
Two weeks went by. We sat down at our usual table; Anthony carefully accommodating the multiple bags of personal items that lugged around with him all day long. Before we had even taken the first bite of our lunch, Anthony said that he had been thinking about what we talked about the previous week.
“I’ve been out on the streets for too long. I’m 55 years Continue reading