That guy on the bench at Friendly

When I go and speak to groups about homelessness, one of the first questions I’m asked is:

“Do you know that guy on the bench at Friendly?”

His name is Mark, and he’s been called “the true face of homelessness” and “the most visible homeless person in Greensboro.” For residents who live, work or shop on the northwest side of town and don’t frequent the areas of the city that many chronically homeless people do, Mark’s may be the only “homeless face” they know. But now, that face is gone.

It’s been several weeks since I heard from a Greensboro police sergeant that Mark was missing and had been seen walking south on a highway out of town. Soon after, Lorraine Ahearn wrote:

“After his seven-year solitary vigil on a park bench near Friendly and Wendover avenues, Greensboro’s most visible but enigmatic homeless person has left…” – ‘Man on bench’ at Friendly gone, 05/30/2008, News & Record

Then yesterday, a new development in the story:

“To thousands of motorists passing by him daily at Friendly Center, he was a street person on a bench, a man who appeared one day in 2001 and left just as abruptly in mid-May. To Kimberly Bono, however, Mark Hoffmann is more than that. He is her father, and the last time she saw him was in 1989. She was 8. ‘He was taking us back to my mom’s house, and he was crying,’ Bono, 27, recalled of Hoffmann’s last joint-custody visit with her and two younger sisters. ‘I don’t know if he left for noble reasons, or if he realized the mental illness was taking over. I never saw him again, and all this time, I wondered what happened to him.’ Bono… said she was therefore ‘flabbergasted’ when a relative back in North Carolina recently sent her a News & Record story… The revelation that her father had been in plain sight for so many years, just an hour from where she grew up, held mixed emotions for Bono… ‘All these people had a relationship with him, and I never even knew him,’ Bono said in a phone interview after reading a May 30 column about Hoffmann’s sudden departure…” — Mystery deepens about homeless man, News & Record, Sunday, 06/15/08

Wherever Mark is, I pray that he’s OK. And that he’s reunited with his daughter soon.

I anticipate that in the future, when I speak on homelessness in Greensboro, someone will ask: “You know that guy on the bench at Friendly? Whatever happened to him?” I hope there’ll be a happy ending to share.

Update, 07/13/2008: Kimberly found her dad.  Turns out, you can go home again.