Homeless Victim Chose to Live on the Streets
By Marilyn Robinson and Sean Kelly
Nov. 5th-- DENVER --Sharon Brown remembers the Sept. 9 phone call well: her cousin Melvin Washington had been savagely beaten and left for dead on a Downtown Denver street.
She rushed to Denver Health Medical Center, where she found Washington dying in a hospital bed. The memory makes her seethe.
"I think they're probably some kids who are out trying to get a big rush, thinking they're having fun,'' Brown said Thursday. "I think they're cowards.''
Denver police announced Thursday that they had made an arrest in Washington's death, one of five slayings of homeless men in Downtown Denver over the past two months.
Brown said that even though her cousin lived on the streets, his life mattered as much as anyone else's.
"Most people never stop to think that homeless people have families and people who care about them,'' Brown said. "I think some were surprised Mel even had a funeral.''
Strolling under the bridge at Broadway and Blake Street where her cousin spent many nights, Brown recalled Washington as a generous and gentle man who chose to be homeless.
"He wasn't comfortable being any place else,'' she said. "The only time he wasn't happy was when it was really cold.''
Only a year apart in age, Brown and Washington grew up more like siblings than cousins, she said. "Fuzzy,'' as he was nicknamed, taught her to shoot marbles, and the two often roller skated together.
An East High School graduate in 1970, Washington attended Rangely Junior College on a baseball scholarship. After a couple of years, he returned to Denver and worked for the city parks department.
Washington joined a rhythmand-blues band, Distinctive Movement, which played local clubs in the mid 1970s. After a show, someone slipped some psychedelic drugs into his beer, Brown said, and he was never the same.
"He went berserk for about 36 hours,'' she said. "After that, his life just kind of slowly drifted away from him.''
Washington lost his city job and was diagnosed as schizophrenic in the late 1970s. He lived off disability checks and panhandled to pay rent at a series of boarding houses.
After his mother's death in 1997, Washington moved to the streets full-time. Still, he kept in touch with his family.
"I promised his mother before she died that I would watch after him,'' Brown said. "He would come over on holidays.''
When Brown buried her cousin on Sept. 21, she dressed him in a suit - "Mel always liked to be dressed up,'' she said-- and put $2 in his pocket - "Just so he'd have a couple of bucks.''
Brown recently picked out a headstone for Washington's grave in Fairmount Cemetery. She's having it inscribed with his favorite saying: "Had a ball. Can't take it all.''
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