Another R.I.P. - SF Tenderloin's "Skateboard"

[Matsubara]

Reading this, I couldn't help being affected by it. Talk about never catching a break.

:cry:



http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/26/BAG5MPFCK631.DTL



Tenderloin mourns an original
Legless panhandler known as 'Skateboard,' killed by mail truck, lived life on the edge
C.W. Nevius
Thursday, April 26, 2007

The requiem for "Skateboard" Holmes began Tuesday night on the cracked sidewalk on Taylor Street. Residents of the Tenderloin community turned out in fits and starts, leaving doorways and tiny hotel rooms to pay their respects.
Few of them would have been able to tell you that the legless, homeless man who rolled the streets on his battered skateboard was named Monty Holmes. Nor that he grew up in Oakland and lost his legs in an accident on the train tracks when he was 6 years old.
But they knew that something needed to be done to mark the passing of the 48-year-old panhandler. Flowers appeared, some of them with potting soil still clinging to their roots after being pulled from planter boxes. There were bottles of brandy (empty), religious candles and trinkets.
Behind the memorial, a concrete wall quickly filled with pencil scratchings and scrawlings from black markers.
"Bless you Skateboard," one of them said. "The man with the biggest heart in the street."
Skateboard's wife, Linda Thomas, stood Wednesday on the sidewalk in front of the wall. A world-weary woman with a nasty scar across her nose, she'd been at the corner of Third and Townsend streets Tuesday afternoon when the driver of a mail truck failed to see Skateboard in the crosswalk and ran over him.

(click link above for full story)

[laylah]

1. So sad.

And the street folks think of themselves as "furniture"! What a horrible way to feel and be treated!

RIP Skateboard.

Jenn

[TahitiNut]

2. Oh, my. I 'met' him once (gave him money) and saw him several times.

:cry: This is sad. If I were in the Bay area, I'd be attending Glide Memorial to remember him. (Glide is chicken soup for the social soul.)

[mdmc]

3. God bless

:patriot: