General Discussion

bondwooley

(1,198 posts) Tue Apr 21, 2015, 11:32 PM Apr 2015

Old Man Howard Died and Here's Why You Should Know

So, Old Man Howard died. And old man in Harlem with a nasty ex-wife died. Big deal. Well, it is a big deal. Part of Harlem felt like it died, too.

And we miss him.

He was one of those people in life you don't necessarily see every day, but over time you find out that the trails you've left behind in life are crisscrossed with each others footprints.

Howard was a parking lot mogul here in Manhattan who found out 20 years ago that his 70 year old wife had taken a new lover -- and she took everything that was left during their divorce. He was basically broke after a lifetime of being ... well, comfortable.

So now he had a new life and a modest allowance -- and the friends in his adopted neighborhood of Harlem (rent was cheap at the time) helped him with moving boxes, bringing out trash and helping him get some groceries home. Howard took that to heart. And we're talking here about little things, like treating him like a grownup, as someone with a viewpoint, as someone who who desperately needed a chuckle from a bad joke, as someone who cared.

As a newly christened underdog he became a champion of other underdogs. When he had a couple bucks stored up, he'd give them to a local business owner to help her meet her payroll. When he had an apartment big enough for two, he gave the spare bedroom to a single mother. When she wouldn't leave, he figured her kid needed her own bedroom, so he just left it to them and bowed out. A lot of people in Harlem could tell you a story like that about Old Man Howard.

Howard died yesterday completely penniless and without any family at all. Turns out his family was just us folks in Harlem. Howard didn't care what race, gender, color or orientation a person had -- he just cared if you were decent and occasionally witty. That made you part of Howard's family. We didn't know that. We felt it, but we didn't really know it.

Howard's ex wife laughed when we tracked her down to break the news that her ex-husband died. When we asked if she would contribute to a decent burial, she laughed harder. Oh, then she hung up.

There's no money for Old Man Howard's funeral, but those of us in Harlem who know what he did for this community -- and found out that we're really his family -- are going to make sure he has the best f***ing funeral a person could have. And this time, we're picking up the tab for the old man we should have been picking up the tab for all this time.

Why are we posting this? Well, take a look around and see if there are any Old Man Howards in your community -- and then do better by him than we did with ours.

That's really the only way we can give Old Man Howard the best f**cking funeral a person could have.

Thanks. From a lot of people in Harlem, NYC.