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8/4/09
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Area students record life stories of Bangor’s homeless
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BANGOR, Maine — Kate Wypyski had met homeless people before. The 16-year-old Brewer High School student served meals over the past couple of years at the Bangor Area Homeless Shelter with her fellow Key Club members.
Until Friday, however, she had never sat down and listened to a homeless person’s story.
“She told me a lot about her life,” Wypyski said after her first interview with a 55-year-old woman who uses the services at the shelter. “She still has a connection to her family in Massachusetts. That kind of surprised me.”
Wypyski was one of eight area teenagers who recorded the stories of 15 homeless men and women. The 30-minute interviews were recorded over the past four days at the Bangor Area Homeless Shelter at the corner of Main and Cedar streets.
Students will discuss the project, “Listen to This: Recording Stories of Bangor’s Homeless,” and play excerpts from the interviews at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at the Bangor Public Library. Edited versions will be broadcast on the Voices segment of WERU-FM at 102.9 FM in Bangor and 89.9 FM in Blue Hill. The complete inter-views will be archived at the library.
The project is the brainchild of Alexandra “Alex” Kelly, 25, of Bangor. Kelly spent most of last year traveling around the country for StoryCorps, an independent nonprofit project whose mission is to honor and celebrate people’s lives through listening. Most often, a younger family member interviews an older one. Each conversation is recorded on a CD given to the participants, and is archived at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
That experience, along with a conversation Kelly had last year with a stranger on an airplane about the homeless, spurred the Bangor native to create the project. She contacted the homeless shelter in Bangor, area high schools and the community radio station where she got her start a decade ago when she created a radio show for children.
Her experience with StoryCorps, Kelly said, taught her the power of both telling and listening to someone’s life story. She decided that by connecting high school students with the homeless and through them via the library with the larger community, people’s preconceived notions about the homeless might change.
Making that “horizontal” connection with the community and its young people is the reason Dennis Marble, director of the shelter, agreed to open the facility up to Kelly and her charges, Marble said Friday.
“We are increasingly trying to figure out how we can have a better impact on the greater community as well as help the homeless. Given the dollars we have, we always are asking: ‘How can we raise awareness?’”
In the past, Marble said, he and officials at shelters around the country have been reluctant to let high school students meet with shelter residents and make a public record due to privacy issues. That attitude is changing, he added, citing the shelter’s clients’ need for validation, which could come through the project.
The shelter has 33 beds and often turns people away, he said. Those who are accepted must be sober, not using drugs and actively seeking employment and housing. The population base at the shelter has risen slowly and steadily over the past few years but has not spiked in the past year due to the faltering economy.
Marble is especially excited about how the students’ experiences will ripple out into their high school communities when they return to school this fall. He predicted it could be a life-changing experience for them.
“I was 14 when a Jesuit priest took me to volunteer at a place like this,” he said. “It didn’t kick in until about 10 years ago when I began this work, but I know it had an impact.”
Kelly said Monday that the students’ interactions with the shelter residents went about as she had expected. They will be editing the stories over the next two days.
“What has surpassed my expectations was that the stereotypes they had have all been erased,” she said of her fellow students. “Most people did two or three interviews, and by the second or third they were interacting on a much more natural, conversational level. The fear factor was down.”
She said the stories students have heard over the past four days cover “the full spectrum.” One she’s most interested in seeing and hearing people’s reactions to is the interview between Ryan Lad, 18, of Glenburn and a young man who is about the same age. Lad graduated in June from John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor.
“They have very different life stories,” Kelly said, “but they found things in common they could connect to — television shows, video games, going to the lake.”
The reasons people have given for being homeless have run the gamut — from alcohol and drug abuse to making poor choices in life to being unable to continue living with family to financial difficulties, Kelly said. Some are native Mainers who have spent their entire lives in the state. Others recently arrived in Bangor from homeless shelters in other states.
One woman interviewed works full time at a retail store but does not make enough money to make her car payment, pay insurance and pay rent without a roommate. An Iraq war veteran who is a native of Kansas said that he has wanted to be in Maine since he was 8 years old.
Will Witham, 17, a student at Bangor High School, decided to do the project because he wanted to establish “some sort of rapport” with members of the local homeless population and learn more about their situations.
“People have such a terrible stigma associated with the homeless, and it’s based almost entirely on pure ignorance and irrational fear.” he said in an e-mail when asked why he got involved in the project. “I mentioned this project to an acquaintance some months ago, and she immediately began inquiring as to whether I would be ‘safe’ or not — completely ridiculous.
“I’m not doing this out of charity,” he said, “or because it will look good on my college application or because I’m such a ‘nice person.’ I’m doing it because they’re my fellow human beings, and our society unjustly punishes them, and I think they deserve to be listened to.”
Witham said Monday that the stories he heard did not disappoint him.
“It just blows my mind, all the different stories we heard,” he said. “It’s really humbling.”
Other students working on the project are Haley Burns, 16, Winterport, a student at Hampden Academy; Colleen Gilley, 16, Dedham, a student at Brewer High School; Deanna Kizer, 16, Holden, a student at John Bapst; Whitney Klamm, 17, Holden, a student at Brewer High School; and Tiffany Rideout, 16, Winterport, a student at Hampden Academy.
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Bravo to these students, spending part of their school vacations this way. I especially liked the comments of Will Witham.
Hey,
Maybe these nice girls could go and hang out with the wonderful homeless peaple on a friday night in a back alley downtown. I think it would bring some real understanding to these young minds about how one becomes homeless.... WERU Communist Radio - very funny!
I just knew there would be a vteran mentioned, at least one. I was there man, good luck to you. Upon looking back at the help received and not received, they will be powerful judges. playing something jesus could be a strain of pretending. This high school project doesnlt make sense. real help does.good luck to the veterans. the self abusers are self medicators. Veterans could be in a realm most would literally not even believe...literally. And there is a dark side of sexual disorders and severe delusion. bangor had a case of this already, leading to homeless murder. And beware of the profoundly sick, I swear to god I was in the same room as a man getting eaten alive. I could smell his rotten flesh.
bxr3main-I'm a veteran and can spell it. I say your a wack job too. Who can make sense of that psycho babble you typed. Get some help for your PTSD my guess would say is from the big "V".
There's always someone who has to rip the negative out and shove it in everyones face. Why can't you just read the article and accept the fact that someone is doing something decent, overtaxed?? Is it because it's not YOU doing it? I'm not sure where your hated comes in but whatever.
When i was little and lived in Bangor my grandmothers girlfriend and I would cook big big meals and package them up with a blanket, or a jacket or anything and give it to local homeless we had seen around town. Not to the shelter, but to the actual person wherever we saw them.
I was always raised to NEVER give a homeless person money, i remember being about 15 and having homeless ask me for money for coffee all the time, i never gave them a dime, instead i bought them a coffee. My grandmother was always worried they would spend it on drugs or alcohol. I remember she would go and sit next to them on a park bench and just talk to them about whatever. She was an ER nurse at EMMC and would alway try to give them a little help whenever she could. Homeless people are people too. Some are bad, but so are some well off people.
why don't they go out and get jobs like the rest of us living of the American taxpayer, all of the liberal are the same. Send them back down to the Bronx were thy belong,,, jerks and liberal
Drc... did you read the article?!?!?!
bxr3main...the best to you. I understood what you were saying. Sometimes we get into a place...sometimes not by our own doing but by circumstances. It's lile there is a line crossed and really hard to come back from. It's dark and deep....and the only thing that bring these people back is compassion and surrounded by people who are willing to take the time and money to help. Do a search on Father Corapi...you tube has videos. Incredible story...If he made it out many can. By the grace of God...God bless you
If people really want to know what it is like to be homeless, take off the nice and clean clothes and really spend time alone not in a tent just with a few clothes limited money very limited money. No cell phone and not just for a few hrs before mid-night spend a couple of days being really homeless. Then come back and write a story. Anyone can become homeless at any time. But you CAN NOT act like you know what it is like untill you really actually live it!! A lot of people might have it bad but being homeless is totally diffrent, esp in the rain, snow and cold. Then top it off that you are all alone in the middle of the night and all the people that you thought really cared are not around you. Then you know how it is. And yes I have actually been truly homeless. You have had to actually live it to know it.
Please never put down people who find themselves homeless. A person can have an excellent job, home, and a sudden illness could strike that wipes out their entire savings, regardless if they have medical insurance or not. We could all be in the homeless shelter someday!
Dennis
I think these kids are doing something great. Why do some people have to always come up with a negative. Dennis is right- you/ we might all find ourselves in this position one day- have some compassion!
I AGREE, I THINK IT IS A GOOD THING TO TRY TO UNDERSTAND WHY OR HOW THE HOMELESSNESS HAS HAPPENED. I DO NOT AGREE THAT WE SHOULD BE BUSING THEM HERE AND THEN BUSING THEM THERE. ONCE AGAIN THE LIBERAL RULES OF MAINE APPLY, JUST CROSS OUR BORDER AND YOU ARE ENTITLED TO ALL WE HAVE...WHICH BY THE WAY IS GETTING LESS AND LESS.....
vchapes what a nice story..But I think with all the $$$$ that our country has there shouldn't be one homeless person. We can send $$$ to all these other countrys but cann't take care of our own..Something is wrong somewhere don't you think. God-Bless to all who try to help one another in this GREAT U.S.A.
I agree, there should be NO homeless, we should be taking care of our own before spending millions on everyone else. If everyone would just help instead of bashing on those who are, we'd be a lot better off!!
I agree with vchapes 100%..couldn't have said it better myself!!
I can see a couple of side effects. One not only do the kids get past the stereotypes, but they might actually learn how not to end up homeless themselves. This is a lesson in the harshness of real life outside of their protected home and school life, and that choices they make might have an important effect on their own lives.
On the flips side a homeless person having someone hear his/her story and actually being listened to might be enough to start them back. Nothing is worse than for a person giving up on themselves. Even having just one person listen and caring might be enough to start a change in the homeless persons opinion about him/herself.
What a great experience for these young adults. The compassion, understanding, and listening tools they have learned, will hopefully stay with them in their future adult lives as well. They "are" our future. Great job students!
Great comments, Christopher Blackwell. And yes, they "are" our future! Once again, these young people have chosen to spend part of their school vacation in this manner; very admirable.
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