College student who was homeless isn’t alone, but he has a brighter future

Aug 28 2009 - 2:49pm | McClatchy Newspapers

By Mara Rose Williams

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — As daylight faded, Ed Charles would begin packing his books in the Penn Valley community college library and worrying about a test most classmates need not worry about.

It was a part of his daily ritual last summer: Spend the mornings struggling to stay alert in class, the afternoons fighting sleep on the job and early evenings studying until the library closed at 9 p.m.

Then roam the streets trying to figure out a place to sleep.

Every college has its own Ed Charles. The number of homeless students out there is unknown, but this year, for the first time, the application for federal financial aid for college includes three questions that will help identify them.

“Every year we have a few,” said Jan Brandow, director of financial aid and scholarships at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. “Each of them has a different story.”

It might be a low-wage job lost and moving into a car, or estrangement from family and hitting the books in a shelter.

Calls this summer from aid officers processing the forms have flooded the office of the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth, said Barbara Duffield, the group’s policy director.

“We don’t have numbers because the federal government stops following these kids past 12th grade,” she said. “But I think the numbers are much larger even than anyone suspects. Despite all the challenges, though, many see education as their ticket out.”

Charles has that vision. His condition keeps him focused on goals — a bachelor’s degree, a good job and eventually making a permanent home with his girlfriend.

The 25-year-old already has come a long way. He got an associate’s degree in criminal justice from Metropolitan Community College-Penn Valley this spring and enrolled in a pre-law program at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., for the fall.

Federal aid, plus money saved working as a janitor at Penn Valley, will pay tuition with some left over. Enough to graduate to a rented apartment or small house.

The U.S. Department of Education describes the homeless as “lacking fixed, regular, adequate housing,” including living in shelters, hotels, cars, tents or “couch surfing” at friends’ houses.

National advocates say the number of students directed to university counseling offices — a bridge to local social service agencies — is large.

The mantra of Ed Charles: “I know that there is nothing I can’t do except the thing I don’t try to do.”

Nights after leaving the library, if Charles was lucky, he hung out with any friend long enough to be invited to stay over. Or he would go to a relative’s house, get a bite to eat and be offered a blanket and an old mattress. At times, he had a car to bed down in.

On unlucky nights, Charles rationed out a few bucks for food then walked the streets until daybreak.

He wants his story to inspire “young dudes out there,” to give up the streets for an education. Charles admits to being a misguided teen who lost permanent living arrangements he once had with relatives.

He was in Winnetonka High School north of the river when he learned the woman he had thought was his mother was actually an aunt. His mother was stabbed to death by his father when he was a toddler, he said.

Learning the truth after so many years, he said, made him angry.

“So angry that no one could talk to him,” said Delores Daniel, another aunt. “I tried, but I couldn’t get through to him.”

Charles also felt he had not been treated as well as other children in the household. The whole mess sent him spiraling down a delinquent course.

“I started doing things I shouldn’t have been doing,” Charles said. “I guess I thought I was grown and could make it on my own. But I could’t find a job and I just fell into the street life.”

He said he once got shot in the back. He suspects it was for wearing the wrong color in the wrong neighborhood.

He was homeless back then too. But hustling marijuana by phone from Kansas City’s streets meant most of the time he had a wad of cash in his pocket and could afford a cheap hotel room or had a woman with whom he could cozy up at her place. He was arrested a few times for minor drug possessions.

Charles also had a son.

“One night I was sleeping in my car in the driveway in front of my baby’s mama’s house,” Charles recalled. “I couldn’t go in. Her family didn’t like me. I woke in the middle of the night and saw my son, 18 months old, asleep in the back seat.”

Charles paused and dropped his chin to his chest.

“It made me think; the life I’m living ain’t nothing good. I don’t want him to live like this. I want something better for him, for myself.”

His son, now 3 years old, lives with the baby’s mother. A daughter from his current relationship died in March of trisomy 18, a chromosomal defect.

When McMurry met Charles, he already had enrolled in classes. McMurry, whom Charles describes as like a father figure, took a liking to the young man, gave him a work-study job in the counseling office and helped him find a place to stay for a while.

“I knew he moved around a lot, but I also knew he had what it takes to finish,” McMurry said. “He’s a good student and he is committed. He made a promise to himself that he would finish school.

“When you see a student like this make it, it’s just heartwarming. There is no pay that’s better. I’m sure this young man is one that is going to make it.”

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