This is an opinion column.
A man died last week. He was struck by two vehicles as he tried to cross U.S. 31 in the dark.
There was a blurb in the paper, as is often the case in traffic fatalities. A man dead, at 61. His name was Douglas Benjamin Barnes. He walked often, and was a frequent visitor to many Homewood businesses.
There was no picture, but there was no question who this man was. He was Doug, who sat outside the Trak Shak on 18th Street in Homewood and talked to runners. He was Doug, who drank coffee at O’Henry’s next door and showed up for meals and services at All Saints Episcopal Church in Homewood, and other churches, too. He told a priest his membership remained in a Baptist church, but he liked to visit others.
He’s the man people thought was homeless, though he was not. He’s the man who might for his own reasons sleep some nights on the street anyway, who might ask for money or might not as he walked the length of that wealthy suburb, who might talk about the Commodores or the history of Homewood High School or the legacy of that famed educator Mamie Foster, who like himself was from Rosedale.
I did not know Doug Barnes. I’d never heard his name until he died in the middle of the highway before the 10 o’clock news on Monday night. But I began to hear about him the next day. From friends and colleagues and people on social media and people who began to see the world through him, who began to look at themselves in new ways because of Doug Barnes.
Mike Hathorne, a former Homewood High School principal and school board member, seemed tormented. Because he and friends talked to Doug Barnes from time to time as they ran through town. They bought him coffee on occasion, or breakfast, after they’d seen him curled up on the sidewalk. Hathorne said he always appreciated the smile Doug kept on his face even when he seemed to have nothing else.
But he agonized over Barnes’ death.
“I felt I didn’t do enough for him,” Hathorne said. “I felt compassion but didn’t take any action. I felt so sad that it ended like that.”
The Rev. Charles Youngson, associate rector at All Saints, said Barnes came to church almost every time it opened. Not as a charity case, but because he really wanted to be involved. He certainly had health issues, and likely mental health issues among them, but he was loved. He could be talkative, but not always revelatory, so he kept some things to himself – like why he chose sometimes to sleep on the streets.
His death stung the congregation – which will hold a service of remembrance for him next Thursday at 5 p.m. at the church – and Youngson was blown away by the number of people who called to ask about it.
“There was something about Doug that united people,” he said. Which is a helluva epitaph.
Maybe that is Doug’s gift to Homewood, and to the world. He was himself, and he allowed others to be comfortable with someone who was different. He was himself, and he allowed others to see themselves more clearly. He was himself, and allowed others to feel.
Doug Barnes was not just a fixture. He was not a mascot or an oddity. Doug Barnes was a man, a human being. And he lived his life in a way that forced people to see it.
I am thrilled to see – I am thrilled to say -- he will be missed.
John Archibald, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is a columnist for Reckon by AL.com. His column appears in The Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times, the Mobile Register and AL.com. Write him at jarchibald@al.com.
Read Al Blanton’s profile of Doug Barnes in 78 Magazine.