Before the shelter project in Boston and before my involvement with homeless veterans, I worked for an ambulance company. I was vaguely aware of the homeless that I saw on the streets every night but I paid little attention to them unless I was forced to pick one of them up and transport them to the city hospital. I usually got annoyed on that assignment because the homeless always reeked of urine or alcohol or both and I saw the task as a pain in the ass and didn’t like those transports at all.
I also attended a weekly combat veterans’ support group in Brighton, a section of Boston. In this support group which met every Tuesday evening were a bunch of other combat Vietnam vets like myself, and this weekly support group helped me to understand why I had some of the behavioral issues that I had.
After a year and a half, as we came to the end of the combat group meetings, our counselor, John Wilder, said, “I can’t do anything else for you guys. You’re on your own.”
The weekly meetings that I had attended for close to eighteen months were something I looked forward to, and, like some of the other guys, I was pissed.
Then our counselor said, “You might want to take a trip to Washington D.C. and see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.”
I asked a buddy from the support group, Mark Helberg, if he wanted to go. He said it would work for him and so we made plans to attend an upcoming “Welcome Home Veterans” concert in D.C. that starred Peter Frampton.
A few weeks later we arrived in D.C. and like any veteran tourists we first went to all the battle monuments. The last one we visited was the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
It was after the concert and after midnight when we both said, OK, let’s go do this, and we drove to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, parked our rental car, and walked down to see the black granite slabs with the names we knew were etched in the stone.
I have never in my life been so moved.
Tears welled up in both Mark and me and we both set off looking for names we might have known. It spooked me that there was a Ken Smith engraved on the wall.
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After about an hour of looking and crying I smelled the aroma of pot. I looked around and there was a treeline behind me and I could see maybe ten or fifteen people there. Mark and I started walking over to them.
As we got closer, we could see that they were all males and all had blankets, ponchos or sleeping bags that they were laying on, and all were talking softly.
“What do you want?” one of them said in the dark.
“Nothing,” I replied, “But you guys are here at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Any of you vets?”
“Who’s asking?”
“Two vets, both combat vets, Vietnam,” Mark answered.
One said, “What unit?”
I said, “Americal, second of the first 196th.”
“Twenty-fifth, Cu Chi,” said Mark.
It seemed all at once that smiles came over the faces of almost everyone there and one said, “You guys have any smokes?”
I said, “Yeah we do, and I’ll share, but I smelled the weed, so you share, we share.”
And with that introduction we were invited to sit down.
It was just after 2am.
One vet said, “Where you from?”
“Boston,” replied Mark.
“Fricken’ yankees,” said one of the other vets.
“Up yours, we’re Red Sox fans,” I replied.
The vet smiled and said, “No, you’re both north of the Mason Dixon, you’re fricken’
yankees.”
“Ah,” I said, “right. But you know, that didn’t matter in Nam, why’s it matter now? So, who are you?”
“First you,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“Ken.”
“My name’s Alan, and I was born and raised in Alabama.”
“Well, you’re a long way from home,” said Mark.
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The guy just looked at us for what seemed to be forever and said, “No, I’m not. I’m home right now.”
“Home? You live in D.C.?” I asked.
“I live here,” he said.
“Here in D.C.,” I said again.
“No, I live here at the memorial.”
“Whoa, wait a minute, you live here? Outside? Here?”
The vet said something under his breath and another vet said that we should pay him no attention, he’s been on the streets a long time, and we should sit down. This vet proceeded to roll a couple of fatties.
One thing led to another and after smoking the bones we all started talking about Nam.
Each of them was a vetabout half were Army and half Marines.
Now the next thing I knew I could see the sun coming up.
“You guys hungry?” Mark asked.
They all looked at us both.
“Yeah, were hungry, you got food too?”
“Well, no, but we can go somewhere and get you guys something to eat,” Mark said.
One said “OK” and said something to one of the guys there about watching their stuff, and the rest, Mark and I included, started to walk up past the memorial to the street.
We found an ice cream truck but this one had coffee, rolls, doughnuts, and all kinds of things to eat, and Mark and I spent maybe thirty or forty bucks buying these guys coffees and stuff, and then we said our goodbyes.
Fast forward a few months and it became obvious to me, after meeting those guys at the memorial in D.C., that many of the homeless you see on the streets are vets.
Now Mark and I and one other named Peace Foxx were on a mission. In Boston there were three main shelters for the homeless and we visited each one and told the managers of each that we had important information for any veteran who stayed at their shelter. Like nitwits we stood up on tables during evening meal and said if anyone was a veteran we had some ways to help and invited them to stay after the meal to hear what we had to say. We 14
were shocked at the first meeting at the city shelter on an island in Boston Harbor when close to four hundred vets attended.
Our jaws were on the floor when we both stood there and said we were vets too, and we asked tons of questions and got an earful when we said they should all go to the Veterans Administration.
“You’re assholes,” one of the attendees said, “You don’t think we’ve been to the goddamn VA?”
It was then and there that I found out that the VA didn’t offer many services to veterans who were homeless.
From those days on, it was an uphill struggle.
Now it just so happens that I like to read. I mean like a book a day. Sometimes I’m reading two or three books at the same time. I get this skill from my mom, who is a voracious reader.
So I started to read all I could find about the homeless, and especially anything about veterans who were homeless. There wasn’t much but there was some new federal legislation I found called the Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Act of 1987. The law originally created twenty programs for the homeless that were administered by nine federal agencies. I read the text of this act more than once, and my reading of this legislation would pay a huge dividend in the near future.
Mark and I had an actor friend with whom we would pal around. He wasn’t a vet, but was a good guy nonetheless. Jim Frangione was an aspiring starving actor in Boston and did all kinds of commercials and theatre acting. He had a place in the North End of Boston (which is like Little Italy) and we would hook up from time to time and go cruising for women.
Jim had the smallest apartment in the worldI swear it was no bigger than a closetand we would sit around his kitchen table and shoot the shit. One night just before we went out, the idea of raising some money to help those we were seeing at the shelters came up.
We kicked around many ideas: potluck supper, pancake breakfast, or maybe holding cans at the entrance of supermarkets.
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Then Jim said, “Why don’t you put on a play?”
“A play? A play about what?” I said.
“A play about veterans, and you can sell tickets and keep the money. But if you do this you gotta be a non-profit.”
Over the next few days we talked about how to start a non-profit and how to do a play.
Neither of us were lawyers so we found someone who knew someone who knew someone else and eventually we got introduced to a guy name Danny Hoveniesian, a lawyer in Cambridge and a Marine veteran of Vietnam. It was our first solid move and Danny was the right guy at the right moment for what we needed. He helped us get the Vietnam Veterans Workshop started and did all the right things that were legal. It was a start.
The following week we had another bullshit session with Jim and he blurted out,
“Now, I don’t think you could do this, but if you could, Jesus, if you could get this guy involved, oh my god, this guy could do this and he knows a lot about theatre and he could make this a successful event.”
“Who are you talking about?” I said. “What’s his name?”
“Mamet. Dave Mamet. He just moved to Cambridge.”
“What’s he do?”
“Duh,” said Jim. “Pulitzer Prize winner. Glengarry Glen Ross. House of Games. Whatdo you live under a rock?”
“What do you know about him?” I ignored the rock comment.
Jim went on about how this guy was a poker player and a man’s man. He lived on the edge and loved cigars. “He’s the guy you need. If you could ever get to him, he would be the guy, trust me.”
I thought about it that night and then I wrote this guy a letter. In the letter I said, look, you don’t know me from anywhere but I know who you are. I know you like poker and I know you like cigars and here is my offer. I challenge you to a game of poker and if you win, I’ll give you a full box of Cohibas. If you lose, you’ll put together a play about homeless veterans so we can raise some money to help my brothers here in Boston who are homeless.
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The next day while I was working in the ambulance we were in his neighborhood and I walked right up to his door and knocked.
A guy answered the door.
“Is something wrong?” he said.
“Nope, I’m looking for Dave Mamet,” I said.
“I’m Dave Mamet.”
I handed him the letter and left.
He stood in the doorway and was reading the letter as the ambulance drove away.
Within a few days he called and said I can play in your game but I can only do it on Thursday night next week. Where’s the game?
At the time I was living in a condo in Dorchester and I gave him the address and directions.
The plan was coming together.
At the poker game there were a few ringers who knew more about poker than anyone else I knew. The idea was to let this guy win a few hands and then clean his clock.
The plan went well.
At some point during the game Mamet needed to either raise or fold. He said he could write a check as he was out of cash and I said cash only. So he folded and that started the development of Sketches of War, an evening of scenes and songs on the subject of soldiers and veterans.
Now, I didn’t know shit about theatre.
I had gone to Shakespeare plays when forced to in high school and I didn’t pay much attention then and never really understood any of the dialog anyway nor did I ever go to any of the theatres in Boston.
Our first meeting with Mamet about how this was going to happen was huge. He said, you know, we need a big name. Someone who will pull people to the show and I have just the guy. But I want you to ask him.
I said to put the guy on the phone.
Mamet made a call from his small office he had in Cambridge and handed the phone to me and said, this is Al, see if Al will do this with us.
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I took the phone and said, “Al, my name is Ken and I’m a combat Vietnam vet and I’m a new friend of David’s and we need to raise money to help the veterans who are homeless. I don’t know you, but David said if you could help, it would sell tickets and I want to know if you can help.”
There was a long pause and Al said, “Put David on the phone.”
I handed the phone to David and all I heard was, “Yeah, yup, sometime the first week of October, ok, yup. I will tell him.”
David hung up and said, “That’s good, that’s very good. Al Pacino said he will do this.”
I was floored.
Al Pacino? Like the Godfather guy?
“Yes,” said David. “The guy who also does theatre and did The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel in the 1970s, you know, by David Rabe.”
“What the hell is The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel?” I asked.
“It’s not important,” said David. “What’s important is that he’s a great actor and his participation will help bring others to the cast.”
Over the coming weeks, in an office donated by David’s’ friend Dick, who also owned a hotel in Cambridge, David pieced together one of the most memorable nights of my life.
I made other calls at David’s suggestion, and before you knew it, David’s name had brought in Christopher Walken, Donald Sutherland, Dennis Franz, Charlie Haid, Kevin Bacon, Michael J. Fox, Don Ameche, W.H Macy, Bob Paxton, Atlantic Theatre Company, the Pipes and Drums of the Emerald Society of the New York Police Department, and many more actors and helpers. There were so many people who were going to help it blew my mind.
One in particular sticks out in my mindMichael Merritt. Mike was a combat Vietnam vet like me and he was a good and dear friend of David’s. He was David’s set designer. It wasn’t long before I found out that Mike succumbed to cancer brought on by his exposure to Agent Orange. I miss him even now. He was a good guy.
As the event got closer to opening night all kinds of media attention was generated and David made some deal to have this event at one of the most beautiful theaters in all of Boston.
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On October 10, 1988 Sketches of War was performed at the Colonial Theatre. It sold out and we raised hundreds of thousands of dollars. The night was magical.
At the event I first met Howard Levine, a lawyer from one of Boston’s top law firms. I didn’t know it at the time, but the help and experience of Saint Howard the Dragon Slayer would put us on the map as an organization and as a charity.
At the event we had Medal of Honor recipients that we had flown in from around the country, and we had all the big money people in the city and all the usual politicians were also in attendance. As I said, the night was magical.
Now, at about the same time, news came out that the Boston VA Hospital was moving from its current downtown location in Boston’s financial district to a new state-of-the-art facility across town. The building that the VA was leaving was going to be sold.
The GSA owned the building and the federal government was getting ready to take offers on the twelve-story, 200,000-square-foot historic building right next door to Boston City Hall and smack in the center of the most expensive real estate in the city.
That’s when the light bulb went on in my head: the Stewart B. McKinney Act for the Homeless. The government would first be required to offer the property to a non-profit that deals with the homeless. Little did anyone else know, and the idea of getting a federal building worth maybe forty million dollars was slim to none and slim left town, but it was worth a try.
I knew it would take a very special person to shepherd this into reality and I knew just the person.
Howard, the lawyer I met at Sketches of War.
The shelter was about to be born.
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