Volunteers give Elkton’s homeless clothes, hot meals

ELKTON, Md. –– Terry "Stubby" Taylor removes a tattered and crinkled pack of cigarettes from his back pocket with fingers caked in dirt and specked with small cuts and scratches. With shaking hands, he pinches the filter off of his last one and lights it, inhaling deeply, smoke curling out from wisps of his long and unruly handlebar mustache.

He leans against a rusty aquamarine mountain bike, which he said he bought for 10 dollars from a little girl up the road. Although Taylor is homeless and lives in a tent in the woods behind the Happy 40 Liquor located on Route 40, he proudly boasts that he would give anyone the shirt off his back. He even asks to buy another cigarette.

Taylor said he has battled an addiction to heroin for the last three decades. He has been clean for two years, but he cannot quite seem to shake off his drinking habit, which has led to cirrhosis of the liver. He was diagnosed about three years ago when he noticed his increasingly bloated and painful stomach.

His bike is his only mode of transportation, and he used it to get from his tent to Marina Park on Jan. 23 to meet up where volunteers from Cecil County's 703 Chapter of the Purple Heart, Rising Sun and Maryland's Boy Scout Troop 28 were passing out clothing and hot meals to North East and Elkton's  homeless population.

Taylor leaves them momentarily, limping and doubled over clutching his lower back, to go to the Port-A-Potties located across the basketball court from where the volunteers have set up shop. When he returns, he is offered a cup of coffee and a grilled cheese sandwich. However, he refuses because he has just thrown up from the pain medicine he took to aid his aching liver.

"I'm trying to stay sober. But every day for a week now I've been blowing it, every day," Taylor said. "I think I drink when I get a little down."

Born in Pennsylvania, he said he skipped town in the mid 80s and fled to Arizona after violating parole for armed robbery. He tried to make a living as a manual laborer there, but

it just was not enough to make ends meet. He started dealing drugs, he said, which quickly spiraled into a full-blown heroin addiction, Taylor said. After serving time for selling narcotics and for another armed robbery it was time to come back to the East Coast. He moved to Maryland.

Taylor has been homeless since last August. He had been living with a friend and his wife, but he moved out over escalating arguments with his wife over his drinking habits. He decided to leave and got himself a tent.

Volunteers from the Military Order of the Purple Heart and Boy Scouts traveled to three different locations: in North East, Marina Park and the parking lot of Happy 40 in Elkton. These areas are all known as being in close proximity to "tent cities," wooded areas or acreage where some of the area's homelessness population resides.

John Stricklett, a commander in MORP in Aberdeen, helped to organize the project. It was the group's first public event since it begun in July.

In the week leading up to the event, Stricklett said he personally walked through parts of the "tent cities" telling people about the opportunity to pick up free food and clothing.

He said each camp is known to draw in different crowds of people. In Marina Park for example, one side of the park attracts drug addicts and alcoholics, while the other side is where the clean and generally downtrodden reside, he said.

The volunteers started the day at 9 a.m. at the Food Lion. They unloaded several pickup trucks full of blankets, sweaters, shirts, shoes and other clothing suitable for surviving frigid winter temperatures. Twelve volunteers from Troop 28, six parents and six kids, also set up a small propane grill where they passed out grilled cheese sandwiches and cups of soup.

The group was met with smaller numbers at Food Lion and Happy 40's; Marina Park drew in the largest crowd — over a dozen people.

For nearly two hours men and women arrived to the park to fill trash bags and suitcases with as much clothing and blankets as they could. Stricklett also passed out batteries and propane, essentials viewed as hot commodities especially during winter months.

Taylor heard about the volunteering from a friend, and he came out to Marina Park to pick his freind up up a tank of propane to use for heating. Using propane makes him nervous, so he would rather stick to non-combustible materials, he said.             Taylor said his tent actually stays warm enough just by using glue and duct tape.

Stricklett said he plans on coming back to Marina Park every week to pass out more supplies, as every day from 4 to 5 p.m. at the park, Net Ministries, a local church, serves dinner to the homeless who live there. He also plans to hold more clothing drives in the future, hopefully two to three times a year.

"Normally, you think of a homeless person as someone who sleeps in a cardboard box in a doorway," Stricklett said. "It's not like that over here."

Taylor said he is grateful for the meager supplies he can take back to his and his friends' tent.

"It's hard on people's pockets right now," he said. "Everyone is facing the pinch and when someone does something like this it's extra special."

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