The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Homeless brother found for holiday
She saw an odd Detroit Free Press story about a grieving writer who got an overdue haircut — a white guy at a black barbershop — and way out in Portland, Ore., Nancy Morales decided to spend a long weekend in Detroit, where Morales enlisted the writer in a search for her homeless brother.
It wasn’t going to be easy finding Brent Green, 58, who’d been homeless for decades and away from family for seven years. “The last time he wrote to me, he said he was living in the Packard Plant. That was back in March, and he hasn’t answered any emails since,” she said.
So a homeless drifter had adopted perhaps the world’s most notorious industrial ruin for his home? Somewhere in those 40 acres of decaying steel and concrete, encircled by 24-hour guards, Morales wanted a reporter to “help me find Brent.”
They failed. After five days, her hope turned to tears. With the reporter’s on-and-off help, Morales visited and drove by the Packard Plant repeatedly, checked the morgue twice, paid two visits to Detroit’s 7th Precinct police station, visited Detroit’s main library where homeless people can use the computers for email, stopped at homeless shelters and the Michigan Humane Society.
The plant guards and the morgue technicians, the detectives, librarians, shelter clerks and street people all promised they’d contact her “if we see him.” More than one stranger prayed with her.
Yet, when the weekend ended in late September, Morales heaved a sigh: “I guess I have to give up and just go home without him.”
The searching and worrying made Morales’ Thanksgiving Day that much sweeter. On Thursday, in Corvallis, Ore., Morales sat down for Thanksgiving dinner with her brother, Brent, who, it turned out, had never left his home state. She found him in a fluke, contacting shelters by Facebook. In mid-October, Brent Green’s name came up at the homeless shelter in Bend, Ore.
“He’s alive and well,” Morales texted the reporter. “He majorly fibbed to me about Detroit and I feel a little foolish about dragging you into this. I want to hug him, love him and throttle him at the same time!” she texted.
Once Morales arrived, she learned that he was working as a janitor, living in a tent outside a house he was watching for absentee owners while caring for their dog. The two have already made plans for a second reunion at Christmas.