You might have seen Bill around Tacoma over the years. He is a local guy. However, for many years, he might have been a person you’d be uncomfortable seeing.
No, nothing’s remotely threatening about him. However, many of us are a bit awkward or conflicted in our attitudes when dealing with homeless men. Bill spent 10 years on the streets of Tacoma, sometimes couch surfing but often staying in abandoned houses or in the woods.
How did he get to that point? He was raised just outside of Tacoma in the 1970s. As a youngster, he had difficulty with school. While he is intelligent, reading could be difficult; perhaps there was an undiagnosed learning disability. He was held back a year. As school became more of a burden and it looked like he might be held back again, he realized how “stupid” he was and simply left school in frustration in the seventh grade.
Later, Bill got involved in drugs and alcohol. Without even a middle-school education, getting jobs was difficult, but he was a hard worker and had some skill with his hands, so he was able to fashion a sort of living doing odd jobs and working around construction in those better economic times. However, with too much of his little money going to alcohol, he lost stable housing and began a decade of living on the streets.
When I met Bill a few years back, he had dealt with his alcoholism and was living in a clean and sober house. However, he was still a middle-aged man with a seventh-grade education, 10 years of homelessness and few marketable skills in a tightening economy.
He had decided to return to school to try to get his GED. This wasn’t easy, given his former experience in education and uncertainty about his abilities. But, as I said, Bill is bright. He had taught himself to read more effectively over the years. He thought getting a high school equivalency diploma might be possible.
In my GED classes, it was quickly clear that he had much going for him. The writing/essay parts of the test would be difficult with his lack of experience there, and the math portion included algebra and geometry, which he hadn’t studied. However, perhaps getting a GED was doable.
Bill passed the 5 portions of the GED test in a matter of weeks, a real accomplishment for someone with so little formal education. I suggested he consider attending college, something that had never even crossed his mind before. This took no great insight on my part. Having worked with adult GED and ESL students getting ready for college over many years, I realized Bill had the goods. However, to Bill, this was an alien notion, something that wasn’t remotely part of how he viewed himself or his abilities.
However, Bill did go on to Tacoma Community College. It wasn’t easy at first. His writing skills were not at college level, and there were large gaps in his education. Still, he is a determined man. He took courses to fill in those deficiencies and eventually started to do well in college-level courses. As he was already working with people in Alcoholics Anonymous groups, he gravitated towards a major in human services.
Bill not only managed college, he thrived. Faculty and others began to appreciate this middle-aged man with a difficult background but real intelligence, compassion and life experience. He was eventually nominated for and won the Ellen Pinto Outstanding Student Award at TCC.
But Bill was not done yet. After graduating with honors from TCC, he continued his education at the Tacoma campus of The Evergreen State College. While studying there, he often would return to speak at our Tacoma Community House graduation ceremonies, where other adults, many also former dropouts, listened in rapt attention to this man with his compelling story.
This spring, weeks before receiving his bachelors’ degree from Evergreen, Bill spoke to an audience of several hundred guests at the Tacoma Community House annual luncheon in the Tacoma Convention Center. While presenters included a television personality and local politicians, it was Bill’s speech, eloquent and from the heart, that brought a sustained standing ovation.
His story continues. This fall Bill – William Quaife – began graduate studies in counseling at Saint Martin’s University.
Perhaps tales of redemption touch us because we all have things that need redeeming. These narratives nurture hope as we deal with our own shortcomings or bad decisions. They give us pause and inspiration. If Bill never counseled another person, he would have already accomplished much in life simply through his story and what it means to the rest of us.
Perhaps you noticed Bill when he was homeless a few years ago. It is thought-provoking to realize you may have been looking at a man with a heroic future.
Bruce McDowell, who lives in Tacoma with his wife, is “quasi-retired” after several decades in teaching/social services. He is one of six reader columnists whose work appears in this space. Email him at bmcdowell@harbornet.com.
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