On a warm March afternoon in New Bern, a man dressed in a ragged hunting jacket sat on the sidewalk beside Cedar Grove Cemetery. His back was to the homes just a few yards away on Howard Street.
Though he looked to be in his early to mid-30s, it was hard to tell his age through the matted beard and hood pulled tight over his head despite the 80-degree heat. Hunched forward, he sorted through a handful of loose change tossed on the cement beside assorted fast-food containers.
After acknowledging that he was sleeping outdoors, the man indicated that he was not interested in assistance.
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“No, I’m good, I’m good,” he said, pointing to a battered blue bicycle propped against the cemetery wall.
Several weeks later, on a far cooler day, Lonnie Nichols leans on his backpack as he rests outside of a store in Glenburnie Plaza. Though he said he was only passing through, Nichols, who described himself as “part Indian,” admitted to being familiar with many of the secret areas frequented by the homeless of New Bern.
“They’re there, you just gotta know where to look,” he said, laughing.
Nichols, who said he’s “pushing 50,” was traveling south to visit family in Georgia, he explained, and only considered himself between homes, not homeless.
“I know where to get clean; I know where to get something to eat,” he said. “I’m not these other folks you see out here.”
‘You never know what you’ll run into’
It might come as a shock to many New Bern residents to know that, not far from the city’s tourist destinations, restaurants and historic homes, people with little more than the clothes on their backs are living in ways normally associated with poverty-stricken, third-world countries.
But for Chris Henry, that reality is no surprise at all.
As a paramedic with the CarolinaEast Community Paramedicine program, Henry has spent the past 15 months working with a homeless population that remains largely invisible. At least once a week, he reaches out …….