samanthajane13
06-14-2009, 05:58 PM
By MARTHA IRVINE
AP National Writer
His hair had grayed and he'd lost several teeth.
But there was something about the small, wiry man who walked into the shelter at the Woodhaven Bible Church in suburban Detroit in search of a bed for the night. With boyish enthusiasm, he told church volunteer Pat Fite about his "good day," how pleased he was to have found some discarded returnable cans and a grungy baseball. Pat helped him clean up the ball. She continued to study his face.
It was a good day for Monte, indeed - and it was about to get a whole lot better.
"You look so familiar," Pat said to him as she poured him a cup of coffee that cold evening last December. He thought the same of her, but wasn't sure why, until she directed him to a nearby table to get a name tag. He scrawled "MONTE" on it, and immediately, Pat knew this was no stranger.
"You're family to me!" she exclaimed, as she darted from behind a kitchen counter in the church basement to hug Monte Handley, who she'd somehow realized was her husband Howard's younger cousin.
The last time they had seen him, Pat and Howard were in their 20s and Monte was a towheaded, freckled boy at a Handley family reunion - summertime picnics that had become increasingly infrequent over the years as the older generation died.
Now, at age 47, here was Monte, waiting for a free meal in a church basement, with no job, scant reading skills and a home he'd fled to escape his druggie friends. Other than the baseball and the cans, the few possessions he carried with him were in a canvas duffel bag: a bit of clothing, cartoons he'd drawn, and a dilapidated book of photos of storefront artwork and signs he'd once painted to earn money. That was it.
With everything going on in her own life, Pat didn't have to take this on.
She and Howard have their own financial struggles and live in an urban area that has seen more than its share of economic heartache, with foreclosure notices, boarded-up banks and gas stations, crumbling roads and peeling paint around every corner. It is a sobering scene.
And yet they knew they had to help. Here, in the midst of hardship, a family was stepping up to take care of one of their own, banding together as their elders would have done in the days before government took on so much of the responsibility.
Whether divine intervention or just an incredible stroke of luck, Monte was back in the family fold - and Pat and Howard were not about to lose him again.
---
It still amazes Pat that the Handleys somehow lost track of one of their own.
Howard's mom, Myra, was one of 16 Handley children from a farm family that grew up on the Illinois-Indiana border. Many of them, Monte's dad Kenneth included, moved to Michigan as young adults and weathered the Depression together. With the addition of children and grandchildren, they grew into a sprawling but still tight-knit clan.
Pat remembers how taken aback she was when she attended her first Handley family reunion, with watermelons kept cold in a nearby stream and Grandma Handley's cherry cake guaranteed to be on the menu. She hadn't had much opportunity to know her own extended family because they'd died or moved away. And she wasn't at all accustomed to a family that hugged as much as the Handleys.
"I remember thinking, 'Wow, this is so weird,'" she says, laughing. "But it really made you feel good. They were so warm and welcoming."
Her view of family was forever changed.
Today, there are Handley cousins strewn across the country. My own mother, a Handley cousin herself, could probably list most of them.
But even she was a bit perplexed when Pat sent an e-mail telling the family about Monte, who is decades younger than most of his cousins. Had she ever met him? One cousin dug up an old black-and-white photo that shows Monte and twin brother Michael with some of their older cousins at a family picnic in 1965, when the boys were 4.
But that's about where their early history with the Handleys ended. Shortly after, Monte's parents split up and his dad, who struggled with mental illness, died a few years later. His mom remarried and Monte lost contact with the family altogether, despite some cousins' more recent attempts to find him and his brother.
There were other reasons Monte got lost. In high school, he struggled academically and his teachers determined that he was developmentally disabled, but he still managed to graduate in 1980. When he was 17, the courts named his mother his legal guardian and said he should continue to live with her into adulthood.
Six years later, though, she died of a pulmonary embolism at age 54. Monte was 24.
"That has always been a huge void for him," Pat says. "His mom was his everything."
With his twin brother looking in on him from time to time, Monte continued to live in his mother's home in Redford Township, Mich. He worked odd jobs, but found nothing steady because he couldn't read much.
He used his skill as a cartoonist to earn money and, more recently, made $100 a week at a local car wash. But he lost that job because, as he puts it, he was too focused on "partying and video games." Some would call him a follower, taken advantage of by the wrong crowd. But he's willing to take responsibility.
"I wasn't no angel," Monte says. "And I'm sorry if I ever hurt anybody."
His friends moved into the house. They smoked crack, drank beer and burned pieces of furniture in the fireplace for heat, since all the utilities had been shut off.
Monte knew he had to get out of there.
Continued...
AP National Writer
His hair had grayed and he'd lost several teeth.
But there was something about the small, wiry man who walked into the shelter at the Woodhaven Bible Church in suburban Detroit in search of a bed for the night. With boyish enthusiasm, he told church volunteer Pat Fite about his "good day," how pleased he was to have found some discarded returnable cans and a grungy baseball. Pat helped him clean up the ball. She continued to study his face.
It was a good day for Monte, indeed - and it was about to get a whole lot better.
"You look so familiar," Pat said to him as she poured him a cup of coffee that cold evening last December. He thought the same of her, but wasn't sure why, until she directed him to a nearby table to get a name tag. He scrawled "MONTE" on it, and immediately, Pat knew this was no stranger.
"You're family to me!" she exclaimed, as she darted from behind a kitchen counter in the church basement to hug Monte Handley, who she'd somehow realized was her husband Howard's younger cousin.
The last time they had seen him, Pat and Howard were in their 20s and Monte was a towheaded, freckled boy at a Handley family reunion - summertime picnics that had become increasingly infrequent over the years as the older generation died.
Now, at age 47, here was Monte, waiting for a free meal in a church basement, with no job, scant reading skills and a home he'd fled to escape his druggie friends. Other than the baseball and the cans, the few possessions he carried with him were in a canvas duffel bag: a bit of clothing, cartoons he'd drawn, and a dilapidated book of photos of storefront artwork and signs he'd once painted to earn money. That was it.
With everything going on in her own life, Pat didn't have to take this on.
She and Howard have their own financial struggles and live in an urban area that has seen more than its share of economic heartache, with foreclosure notices, boarded-up banks and gas stations, crumbling roads and peeling paint around every corner. It is a sobering scene.
And yet they knew they had to help. Here, in the midst of hardship, a family was stepping up to take care of one of their own, banding together as their elders would have done in the days before government took on so much of the responsibility.
Whether divine intervention or just an incredible stroke of luck, Monte was back in the family fold - and Pat and Howard were not about to lose him again.
---
It still amazes Pat that the Handleys somehow lost track of one of their own.
Howard's mom, Myra, was one of 16 Handley children from a farm family that grew up on the Illinois-Indiana border. Many of them, Monte's dad Kenneth included, moved to Michigan as young adults and weathered the Depression together. With the addition of children and grandchildren, they grew into a sprawling but still tight-knit clan.
Pat remembers how taken aback she was when she attended her first Handley family reunion, with watermelons kept cold in a nearby stream and Grandma Handley's cherry cake guaranteed to be on the menu. She hadn't had much opportunity to know her own extended family because they'd died or moved away. And she wasn't at all accustomed to a family that hugged as much as the Handleys.
"I remember thinking, 'Wow, this is so weird,'" she says, laughing. "But it really made you feel good. They were so warm and welcoming."
Her view of family was forever changed.
Today, there are Handley cousins strewn across the country. My own mother, a Handley cousin herself, could probably list most of them.
But even she was a bit perplexed when Pat sent an e-mail telling the family about Monte, who is decades younger than most of his cousins. Had she ever met him? One cousin dug up an old black-and-white photo that shows Monte and twin brother Michael with some of their older cousins at a family picnic in 1965, when the boys were 4.
But that's about where their early history with the Handleys ended. Shortly after, Monte's parents split up and his dad, who struggled with mental illness, died a few years later. His mom remarried and Monte lost contact with the family altogether, despite some cousins' more recent attempts to find him and his brother.
There were other reasons Monte got lost. In high school, he struggled academically and his teachers determined that he was developmentally disabled, but he still managed to graduate in 1980. When he was 17, the courts named his mother his legal guardian and said he should continue to live with her into adulthood.
Six years later, though, she died of a pulmonary embolism at age 54. Monte was 24.
"That has always been a huge void for him," Pat says. "His mom was his everything."
With his twin brother looking in on him from time to time, Monte continued to live in his mother's home in Redford Township, Mich. He worked odd jobs, but found nothing steady because he couldn't read much.
He used his skill as a cartoonist to earn money and, more recently, made $100 a week at a local car wash. But he lost that job because, as he puts it, he was too focused on "partying and video games." Some would call him a follower, taken advantage of by the wrong crowd. But he's willing to take responsibility.
"I wasn't no angel," Monte says. "And I'm sorry if I ever hurt anybody."
His friends moved into the house. They smoked crack, drank beer and burned pieces of furniture in the fireplace for heat, since all the utilities had been shut off.
Monte knew he had to get out of there.
Continued...