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A Boy's Story
- Midnight Run
By Charlie Berne
For the first
semester of my junior year, I have been doing a program in New
York City called CITYterm. Our classroom has been the entire
city, with constant exploration of different parts of this
magical place. We live on the Masters School in Dobbs Ferry
campus, and were lucky enough to have been hooked up with the
Midnight Run program.
Midnight Run is a
program based out of Dobbs Ferry, New York run by Dale
Williams, an ex-homeless man from New York City. Dale was
homeless in New York City for three years after moving from
Boston, and encountering the epidemic that destroyed the lives
of so many in New York City at the time: crack. He lost all of
his money and roamed the streets, just hoping for a handout.
He told us stories about freezing and having people cross
the street in order to avoid his wretched smell. After
cleaning himself up, he decided to create the Midnight Run
program and bases it out of the Dobbs Ferry Presbyterian
Church. It has been going since 1992.
There are thirty
kids in our program, and we were broken into groups of ten and
each ventures into the "homeless hot-spots" of the city on
separate nights. On the nights of these "runs," each of us is
given a job such as making sandwiches or putting together
toiletry bags back at the school. When these tasks are
complete, we all fill the bus and head into the city. By
10:30, ten of us are sent out on the road, with the group
ecstatic for the experience.
I was personally
terrified. Considering my ingrained preconceived notions about
homeless people, and my sheltered background, I was in
complete shock that this school was allowing ten
high-schoolers and two teachers to roam the streets at night
and start conversations with random strangers. When I thought
of homeless people, there were typical stereotypes
swirling through my head: dirty, smelly, crackheads, stupid;
the hypotheses were infinite.
As we neared our
first stop, we were given separate jobs to take care of, such
as pouring soup or handing out clothes, etc. There was one job
that we were all assigned to do; start conversations. This was
the part that worried me the most. How are we supposed to
start a conversation? Won't they try to rob us? I knew
these prejudices wouldn't allow me to actually experience
this opportunity so I decided to push them aside as much as
possible.
I was assigned the
job of giving out soup and coffee, and left the van as excited
as possible. I wasn't going to allow myself to waste this
opportunity, no matter what was going through my head. The
teachers stressed how this experience had been so life
changing for so many prior students of the program and I knew
it could be for me.
Everyone in our
group was very standoffish at the beginning. People were
handing out food and being friendly but weren't allowing
themselves to become comfortable with these strangers. Our
first site was an alley off 23rd street, where we found
at least thirty boxes with bodies sticking out of the ends. We
were walking from box to box whispering, "Midnight run!
Clothes, food, toiletry's!" Many of the men would shake their
heads and signal for us to walk on. Some of the men woke up
and made two lines at the clothes and food vans.
For some there was
an obvious disdain for the fact that sixteen year old
kids were acting as short-term providers for the men, and many
commented on the paradox. But so many were grateful and would
praise us repeatedly. As we were giving food, there was a man
with a bald head and a dirty red t-shirt with U.S. Navy
printed on it. I began a conversation with him and noticed he
didn't at all fit my stereotype of a homeless man. He was
soft-spoken and was completely engaging. I asked him if he was
in the Navy and he told me he was and that he
was posted for many years in Rwanda. He began telling
stories from the area. They included watching eight year olds
chasing each other with knives, saying it got to the point
where he had to fatally wound many of them. While telling the
story a tear rolled down his cheek and he had to repeatedly
stop talking. We were so engaged in the story -- some of us
were also in tears -- and it ended with silence. He left with
his sandwich bag and toiletries, exchanging hugs with all of
us. We were left in shock and asked to pile onto the bus to
the next stop.
Throughout the
night there were some people that were rude, but there were
never any outbursts like what I assumed would occur. There was
no attempt to mug us, shoot us, or rape us, something that was
obvious to the teachers but not at all to me. There were
life-changing conversations for all of us, and we were able to
leave the experience feeling like we made some sort of
difference.
I left the
experience still in shock. I still remembered the words of the
man explaining the slaughtering of children and the cries of
women. He created a picture impossible to erase which I still
have with me today. He was so kind and gentle to all of us,
and he left an emotional scar that I will never forget. He was
able to help destroy so many of the prejudices that I assumed
were indestructible. One of the main assumptions he shattered
was the idea that I was going to be higher up in the hierarchy
in the exchanges with these men. I assumed that they would all
be bumbling drunks or crackheads and wouldn't even be able to
have these intelligent conversations I had been told
about by the teachers. This turned out to be completely
false. This man was a teacher to me for a brief moment, and
through his instruction I was able to grow as a person.
Charlie Berne
Falmouth, Maine
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