Fulfilling Role Found : How Soup Surplus Led to Feeding Homeless in Park

At 5:30 on a recent Wednesday afternoon, Nan O’Hara drove her black Cadillac Eldorado into a parking lot in Balboa Park. Darkness was swiftly transforming the park into a chilly shadowland, its tree-lined paths deserted by the joggers and the moms pushing strollers, and left to the park’s nighttime inhabitants--ragged groups of homeless men.

O’Hara, a petite woman wearing jeans, tennis shoes, and a University of Kentucky sweat shirt, got out of the car with her friend, Bob Cotney. They approached a group of five or six scruffy-looking men hanging out in the Pepper Grove area off Park Boulevard.

“Are you hungry?” O’Hara asked.

Several of the men nodded.

“Well, you’re in luck. We’ve got bean soup and baloney sandwiches tonight,” she said, as they followed her and Cotney to the Cadillac.

Dinner Is Served

Then, as she has been doing five nights a week for a year, Nan O’Hara opened a cooler in the trunk of her car, took out 16-ounce foam cups containing thick bean soup with bacon, and handed one to each man. Cotney passed out the sandwiches--baloney on white bread.

“When things are stolen and you’re depressed and down, it’s nice to know there are people like this,” said Patrick Golden, 35, a lanky man with longish blond hair and a deep sunburn from long hours spent in the open.

Golden said he has played guitar professionally and would like to make some money with his music, but shortly after he came to San Diego in December, his guitar was stolen. Despite the hard luck, he smiled as he told his story, and kidded around with O’Hara.

Another man, Jay, silently extended his hands, which were covered with sores--he picked up a staph infection scrounging for recyclable material in trash cans, O’Hara said. She poured out some lotion and rubbed it into his ravaged hands.

Then, it was time for her next stop, one of five she made that evening.

“I spent all my money on beer, I’m starving,” said a skinny man wearing a red Coca-Cola baseball cap, who shambled up when O’Hara stopped by the Shuffleboard, Bridge, and Roque Club on Balboa Drive.

“Have you eaten today?” she asked.

He shook his head. O’Hara handed him a container of soup and a sandwich.

“You’re a lady and a scholar,” he said.

‘Kentucky Lady’

“Lady” or “Kentucky Lady” is what all of her homeless friends call her, O’Hara said, as she prepared the soup and sandwiches in the sunny kitchen of her Mission Valley condominium earlier that afternoon.

She said the nickname is because of her personalized license plates--”KY LADEE.” But talking to O’Hara, one suspects that the name is also because of the graciousness and gentility the Kentucky native projects.

O’Hara, a trim, 40ish brunette (“A southern lady’s prerogative is to not reveal her age,” she said), is a divorcee with two grown children. Though she is currently not working, a friend described her as a consultant in marketing and public relations.

Her former beauty titles--she was a Miss Ashland, Ky., and Miss American Legion--still show in her patrician features and poised demeanor. She moves and speaks with uncommon grace, even while stirring two 5-gallon pots of bean soup while recalling how she started feeding homeless people in the park.

“Someone gave me a big container of soup about a year ago,” she said. “I thought, ‘It’s cold tonight. I’ll call a homeless organization and take my soup to them.’ But it was a Saturday and all I got were answering machines.”

Determined to get the soup to hungry people, O’Hara resolved to take it to them herself. Figuring she had enough for about 30 servings, she went to the store to try to find 30 large foam cups with lids. The only place where she could locate both cups and lids was the Price Club, where she had to buy in bulk--1,000 cups and lids, as well as 300 spoons.

“Then I thought I might as well get bread,” she said. “I got a gallon of mayonnaise at the Price Club for $3, and I made mayonnaise sandwiches.”

Off and Running

O’Hara’s mission had begun.

For the first three weeks, she distributed soup and sandwiches downtown. She would stop her car and hold up a hand-lettered sign saying “Free Soup.” However, she didn’t feel safe downtown. After a man became furious that she had run out of sandwiches and hit her with a cue ball, she decided to try the park instead.

Among the homeless in Balboa Park, O’Hara said, she has found a small society--a number of loosely organized groups of five to 30 people--in which individuals look out for one another.

For example, when one group manages to get a free block of commodity cheese or a big bag of rice, they will give it to her to use for cheese sandwiches or rice soup for everyone--helping her feed 55-60 people for only $11 a night.

(O’Hara also relies on donations from her friends, such as a few dollars or a box of foam cups.)

Rules of Conduct

The groups also have their own strictly enforced rules of conduct. In the largest group, which congregates at 6th and Laurel, every person must pick up after himself.

“One fellow threw his cup down after eating his soup, and another made him pick it up,” she said.

There are also a number of rules pertaining to O’Hara herself.

“They know when the Kentucky Lady is there, there is no foul language or drinking, nor will they let anyone drinking come near me,” she said.

Once, one of the handful of women in the park, said a curse word in front of O’Hara and immediately caught herself.

“Oh, lady, I’m sorry, no one in the park is supposed to curse in front of you,” O’Hara quoted the woman as saying.

O’Hara said she feels absolutely secure among the Balboa Park homeless. They have developed an enormous amount of mutual trust, and she has offered to help community leaders gain access to them.

Reaching the Homeless

This January, after she read that the county was sponsoring two vans to go among the homeless, O’Hara called the office of Supervisor Susan Golding, who had initially proposed the van project. O’Hara said she left a message that if Golding really wanted to reach homeless people, she could get her there. But the call was never returned.

Asked about the call, Golding said that an aide, Myrna Zambrano, did speak to O’Hara, and that Zambrano understood that O’Hara was concerned that the van wasn’t getting to people in the park. Zambrano then called Pat Shields, the project coordinator, and learned that the van did go to the park.

Golding suggested that because the van project, Project Homebase, only has enough funding to operate during daytime hours, whereas O’Hara goes to the park in the early evening, she and the van have simply not crossed paths.

“She’s right that people who are homeless are very suspicious,” Golding said. “If Nan has some good suggestions, I would love to hear them. I would like to hear anything that will help resolve what is a very difficult situation.”

Compounding Problem?

A number of people who work with the homeless in San Diego feel that it is a situation which O’Hara may be compounding.

“I’ll go to the wall for homeless people and their rights,” said Alice Stark, executive director of the Uptown Interfaith Service Center, which recently provided advocacy services to several Balboa Park homeless whose belongings were reportedly confiscated by the police.

“But (O’Hara is) creating more problems than she is solving,” Stark said. “She is putting them at risk because the police will arrest someone for something they call illegal lodging. If she wants to help, she should support some of the established feeding programs.”

The Rev. M. A. Collins of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church agrees.

“Our beef is we really feel (people like O’Hara) mean well, but we feel they should cooperate with existing structures,” Collins said. “They reflect a simplistic understanding of the whole problem.”

St. Paul’s, at 5th and Nutmeg next to Balboa Park, provides nighttime shelter for homeless people. It was the site of several City Council candidate forums last fall, when neighborhood residents expressed their concern that the homeless in the park were spilling into the nearby neighborhood.

Despite the reservations about O’Hara’s actions, Glenn Allison, executive director of Episcopal Community Services and a member of the Regional Task Force on the Homeless, said he supports O’Hara’s mission.

“If there were adequate services and adequate facilities, it would be another matter,” Allison said. “But anyone who has anything to do with this knows that is not the case. Therefore, if you don’t have a solution to it, why would you discourage someone else from their attempt at a solution?”

Getting Them Off Streets

O’Hara agrees with her critics that the ultimate answer is not to feed people but to get them off the streets. She said she has lined up jobs for a number of homeless people, soliciting the landscape contractor at her condominium complex and friends in the construction industry.

She said she tries to help one or two people at a time. Her latest project is Jay, the man with the infected hands. He wants to go look for work in Alaska, and she is trying to get him a few weeks of work so he can have enough money for the trip, and a backpack.

O’Hara proudly displayed a neatly lettered flier in which two homeless men advertised “meticulous auto polishing” and provided a map with landmarks, such as a restroom and a tree, showing where they could be found.

As long as homeless people remain in the park, O’Hara said she plans to continue providing food and, when possible, clothing and jobs.

Why does she do it? O’Hara said she has been asked that question often by people in the park, and some provide their own answers. She said one man says she does it to “get on the right side of the Lord.” O’Hara’s own answer to the people in the park is, “I feel very fortunate that I can come down here and help you because I have a little more going for me than you do and I want to help.”

She said she has a great deal of respect for the homeless people she has met, and apparently the feeling is mutual. One man called her “an angel who flew too close to the earth.” The group in the pepper grove decided she should run for mayor.

Different Outlook

Cotney, who was putting the sandwiches in plastic bags, added that it took O’Hara three months to convince him to go to the park with her. He had thought the people were just lazy. Now, however, he tries to accompany O’Hara at least three nights a week.

“I’d say that 95% have the desire to better themselves, but they don’t have the means,” he said.

He has learned that people remain on the street because of the extreme difficulty of getting a job when they have no fixed address, no ability to shower, and ragged, dirty clothes.

After a year as a one-woman welfare agency, O’Hara said she has no plans to quit.

“By my going there, it’s just a little bit of light in their lives, a little bit of hope,” she said.

And for Easter, O’Hara is planning a special event--a hamburger cookout, soft drinks and colored Easter eggs.