Local Man Role Model for Fellow Shelter Residents
By Alex Villareal

“Life ain’t always easy,” sings Mitch McClary, strumming a guitar atop the Rosemary Street parking deck.

Life isn’t easy for Mitch. He’s been homeless for a month now.

But he refuses to let that stop him.

“ Yes, I’m homeless,” says Mitch. “I’m sleeping in a shelter. But what I do here makes me feel better about my situation.”

Mitch has lives at the Interfaith Council Community House on Rosemary Street for the past month.

The Vietnam Vet gives all he can to the shelter and the homeless people inside.

“ When you look at a homeless person, you got to look at their heart first,” advises Mitch. “You got to look at their face. You got to look at the person.”

Mitch reached out to shelter resident Owen Qually as soon as he stepped into the shelter.

“He said, ‘You have a guitar. Can I play it?’” recounts Qually. “He just sat down on the floor and went through a bunch of different blues licks and sang me a couple songs that he had written himself."

“It was a very positive experience,” Qually continues. “It made me feel like I wasn't walking into another place that was filled with nothing but emotional and social diseases.”

From college student to private investigator to musician, Mitch does not fit the homeless stereotype.

“ There are times that I feel like why am I'm here?” says Mitch. “I know it's not my fault, but why am I'm here?"

So why is Mitch homeless? A mouth infection resulting in four surgeries forced him to stop working in April. When he could no longer pay the rent for his apartment, he moved into the IFC Community House.

Michael Carlo Corbett Jr., a part-time manager at the IFC, says Mitch is a role model for others in the shelter.

" I like guys that come through like him because they see both sides,” says Corbett Jr. “They walk both sides of the road. And those guys, they can help you out in a lot of ways especially being in a facility like this, because they come with leadership."

Mitch uses his leadership to encourage others like him to get their lives back on track.

" This is not the place to make a longevity thing out of it,” says Mitch. “You get here. You do what you have to do. You give back. You try to make sure that everything is going right for you, you try to get yourself some work and get out of here and make room for the next person."

Mitch will make his new home in Georgia when his wife rejoins him in October. Hard times have forced them to live apart for more than two years.