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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.
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