RutlandHerald.com - We Are Vermont

'Living homeless doesn't define me'

Morgan Brown sits in the Christ Church pocket park in Montpelier last week. JEB WALLACE-BRODEUR / TIMES ARGUS

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MONTPELIER — Morgan Brown is candid — but not apologetic — about his circumstances.

He's homeless, living in a tent in the woods in or around Montpelier. He carries his belongings — an extra shirt, underwear, socks, a clock radio, a first-aid kit, and toiletries — in a backpack everywhere he goes. He eats at a church soup kitchen, and snacks on Clif Bars.

Brown suffers from mental health issues, including depression and suicidal tendencies. He has good periods — and not-so-good periods. One day last week, he was not so good.

But even on a bad day, Brown inadvertently remains an advocate. It's one of the things he's best at, looking out for and speaking up for the homeless and the mentally ill.

"People are people, and their housing situation doesn't define them, it doesn't determine what they might do or what they're about," Brown said during a conversation last week, seated outside the Kellogg-Hubbard Library in Montpelier, catching a rare glimpse of sunshine. "Living homeless doesn't define me. I don't let that keep me from doing certain things when I'm able.

"Since the summer of 1997, I have been without permanent housing," he added in a follow-up e-mail. "In the meantime, I have stayed where I could. Sometimes that has meant 'doubling up' (i.e., staying with someone for a time), 'couch surfing' (staying with someone for a short time, maybe a night or more here or there, sleeping on a couch or on the floor or sometimes on a bed maybe), sleeping in a car, wandering the streets at night — resting where and when one can, sleeping on a porch or in a hallway or tenting out in the woods, as I am now."

Although he has worked on a dairy farm, in a factory, as a draftsman (for which he's trained), and on a warehouse floor, he's not employed right now, and that clearly bothers him.

"I'd love to be working. I never signed up for this," he said of his inability to hold a job. "Who wants to live with major depression and suicidal tendencies, living homeless. I'd rather be working."

Brown was born in Middletown, Conn., but taken from his mother as a baby and put into foster care in Rhode Island.

"The last time I remember seeing my mother when I was little was my father was beating the sh-t out of her," he said. Brown said he was colicky, and his mother was home alone with a crying baby. "She slapped me across the head a couple of times. She tells my father, and that's it."

Eventually, his father, who would later enter a mental hospital — as did his mother — gained custody of Morgan, and the two moved around, leading Brown to do poorly in school and repeat the fourth grade.

"They pulled me out of (the fifth-grade) class … it was horrifying," he recalled. The staff put him back in a fourth-grade class with too few seats. He shared a seat with another student.

Brown dropped out of his junior year of vocational drafting program after two surgeries for scoliosis, and hitchhiked to Florida with no particular plan. He was carrying around his mother's address, although he had never called or visited her in all those years. A sheriff in Florida, searching his belongings, found the address.

"That was my first time of being homeless," Brown recalled. After seeing the address again, he decided to hitch back and find his mother, who had remarried, had three children, and divorced again. "I was in bad shape. I hadn't slept, I hadn't eaten in three days. I didn't have anything but the clothes on my back."

Along the way, a truck driver picked him up, bought him a meal, listened to his story, and gave him the money to call his mother from the road.

"He was a good man," Brown said. "He told me to get to where you are going, and take care of yourself. I wasn't sure I could promise that. It seemed like a lot to promise. I said, 'I'll do my best.'"

Brown said that truck driver, who was a Christian, started Brown's commitment to "going the gracious extra mile and beyond. It's my way of showing my gratitude. I try when I can to do what I can for others. It's no obligation. I didn't ask that guy for nothing except the ride."

"He started talking to me," Brown continued, becoming emotional. "A lot of times that's what people need. If they are comfortable with that, sometimes it helps to have somebody talk to them."

Things didn't work out with his mother and half-siblings, so he returned to his father.

"I didn't want to go back to my father's, but I didn't want to end up in worse circumstances," which he had learned often faced the young, isolated and vulnerable. He later moved into an apartment, and began an on-again-off-again drug problem, eventually moving into assisting with Christian drug-rehabilitation work in various states.

Somewhere along the way, Brown married for a few years and had two children, now grown: a son and daughter he lost touch with for 19 years until a few years ago. He tears up describing writing on his blog about his daughter's birthday, wishing her a happy one, when she unexpectedly typed in, "Thank you." It was their first communication in years.

She and her brother came to Montpelier and met Brown near the library for a visit.

"That was cool," he said.

Brown's life in Vermont began in 1988, when he began receiving disability benefits and moved into a Rutland motel. He also began his activism around that time, getting involved in the mental health movement. Three years later, he moved to Montpelier, where he has lived in a motel, apartments and now in a tent in the woods, and continued his work, focusing over the years on issues linked to homelessness, mental illness, police use of Tasers and more. He even served on the Montpelier Housing Authority board for eight months.

"What I tend to focus on is helping to identify and fill gaps and unmet needs," Brown said of his advocacy. "It is part of what I am good at doing, sizing up a situation, figuring out what is needed and trying to do what is required to meet the need or fill the gap, including working with others to help do so."

Because I have come to respect his work and wondered aloud how he was able to accomplish advocacy while homeless and suffering from depression, Brown worried that I might portray him as some kind of hero.

"I want to overcome the poster child 'hero' aspect, as though it's something unusual or extraordinary," he cautioned me. "I've known other people who had way worse experiences. I'm not complaining about it."

I asked Brown where he thought he might be in 10 years.

"Assuming I'm still alive … ideally, I'd have a little place of my own, neighbors not right next door, a little piece of land, maybe a horse, a dog, a cat. I'd grow vegetables."

Morgan, that sounds like a lot to live for.

sue.allen@timesargus.com