My Friend Willie

One of my favorite people in the world, one of my most difficult relationships. I met Willie in 2007 doing photography work for a homeless shelter in Knoxville. He taught me more about life and humility than I have words for. To write much about him would leave me in a puddle of tears. I met him in a particularly broken time of my life. He was a recovering 60 year old heroin addict living on the streets without much recovery, and I was on my own journey.

I was a young, rather foolish white girl who thought she could fix her own problems by saving the homeless in Knoxville. I was giving my phone number out to strangers while I was doing street photography without much sense or understanding of the problems I was facing. He quickly told me I was foolish, and had the good boundaries and kindness to tell me so. He was raised as a child in Mississipi, and moved to Chicago in the Great Migration. He got his first pair of shoes for the journey as a child when his mother took a man behind a building and when they came back, she had money for sneakers for her boys.

I didn’t have a relationship with my dad at the time, and we would go to Starbucks for coffee or Captain D’s (his favorite), and we would talk about addiction, what I was going through, how he wanted a home. It was the most unlikely friendship, and it was also a safe place. There was nothing weird or loaded about our conversations, and if anything, he taught me how to protect myself better in ministry, on the streets, and in being a girl in her 20s. He taught me a lot about gratitude, and about my view as a white female was very, very narrow. There are so many things I take for granted.

He drove me crazy. We would setup times to meet and he would show up about 1/3 of the time. He was still battling an addiction, and I was scared for him all the time. He got cancer and wouldn’t tell me where he was, and died in Chicago with a grapefruit size tumor, 4 years after we met. I was angry, sad, relieved, and guilty when he died. And a lot of the grief of that loss comes up when I least expect it, and brings up guilt and grief from a lot of other areas.

Friendship comes from unexpected places, and touches your heart deeply. Parenting comes from unexpected places. When my heart lets me go there, I am deeply grateful for our time together, and wish I could have done more. Willie knew God, and helped a lot of people along the way. One of the people he helped the most was me.

The wonderful Knoxville News-Sentinel photographer Clay Owen died suddenly of a heart attack when he was 47. The last assignment he completed was to tell Willie’s story, as part of Knoxville’s 10 year plan to end homelessness. Clay knew only a piece of Willie's life and I wish I could tell them so much more, but here is that story.