Remembering the Bus

The response to my first letter about the New York City Relief Bus has been overwhelming and humbling. It’s amazing but I have some great friends and family out there who have responded with a total to date of over $1600. That’s just the first few days. I expect we will have that engine purchased before the month is out.

All this writing about the Bus and the wonderful work of Richard and Dixie Galloway and company made me a bit nostalgic and I remembered how I first came into contact with New York City Relief. At the time, my production company, NohHands Productions, was probably at it’s peak. We were doing 4 or  5 million dollars of business a year which I thought was fantastic for a little nobody like me. My biggest agency client at the time was Jordan, McGrath, Case & Taylor and the client that was paying the biggest bucks was Quaker’s Life Cereal. We were doing those spots around 2 or 3 times a year and we had the method down to a science, whereby I was making more money than I even should have. The work was fun and the spots were very good and I was feeling very good about myself at the time.

And then I got a call from a guy named Tom who was a writer at the agency but someone I had never met or dealt with before asking me if I would come in to talk to him about a special project. I was eager to do more and I was in his office the next afternoon. Tom was a junior copywriter and his was a small cramped office but he seemed like a nice guy and we got right down to business. He had heard about me from someone else at the agency and decided to ask me to work on a pro bono piece that was the pet project of Pat McGrath himself. I didn’t know McGrath but his name was on the door so I thought this would not hurt my status at the agency at all – of course I’d do it.

The project was to create a promotional film about a Christian organization that owned a bus that goes into the streets of the worst neighborhoods of the city with a skeleton crew of volunteers and tends to the homeless with food, medical attention and counselling. It was right at the word Christian where I stopped the conversation. As I told Tom, I like to think of my self as open minded but I can’t support any group or organization that is espousing some religious agenda, especially a born-again Christian agenda. He said he understood but that it would be a great favor to Pat McGrath if I would just go down to watch them in action and then make up my mind. Reluctantly I agreed and told him I would be in touch. As I was leaving the office I ran into the head of production, Peter Cohen, who inquired as to what I was doing there on that given day and when I told him he paused for a long moment and then said “Take my advice and don’t do it.” I was kind of stunned. I asked him why but he just walked on.

Now at that time I had such a great relationship with most of the people at JMCT that I often would just walk into the production department unannounced and strike up conversation with anyone I ran into. That included Peter Cohen, Judy White and almost all of the other producers and several of the creatives and even some of the account people. I felt pretty cocky and confident in my powers of persuassion but I should have been smart enough to listen carefully to the head of the department that was giving me about 3/4 of a million in billing every year. I did ask Judy her opinion but she didn’t have one so I decided that I would go down to see what the fuss was all about.

The next Wednesday morning the bus was scheduled to be at a particular spot near the Port Authority Bus Terminal at Times Square and I got there early. To my surprise, at the area where I was told the bus would be, there was a large group of homeless types already gathering. They were for the most part dirty, smelly and many of them looked to be either drunk or drugged out or simply disturbed. Men and women, the majority were black or Hispanic. I kept walking around the block until the bus arrived so as not to draw attention to myself.

Right on time the bus pulled up and the volunteers began to prepare it for servicing this motley crew. The side opened into a soup kitchen. The rear opened up into a mini medical station and the front, according to signs now being hung on the side of the bus, was open for counseling to anyone who desired it. They were able to connect people to any sort of help they might need. They had one of  those big clunky cell phones, courtesy of AT&T and after getting to the bottom of a person’s story they would find out of this or that detox center had a bed for them or if another organization might have some work or whatever. It was quite impressive.

Also impressive was how the people on the street, their numbers growing as the smell of coffee and soup began to fill the air, lined up in single file, quietly and effeciently with no fuss or muss. They seemed so happy and appreciative to be getting their soup and bread that they would do anything to cooperate. As some the volunteers began to dish out the food, others began to mingle among those on line and talk about their problems and see if there was anything else that could be done and get them set up to see the counselor inside the bus. Once inside the ‘counselor’, at that time a guy named Pepper Potter, would try to get to the bottom of their demons to find out what they really needed to do. Conversations went something like:
C “What’s going on with you?”
H “I need a job.”
C “What were you doing before?”
H “I had a job but I was fired.”
C Why were you fired?”
H “I dunno”
C “There must have been a reason.”
H “They tought I was doing drugs.”
C “Were you doing drugs?”
H “Yeah, sometimes.”
C “Are you doing drugs now?”
H “Yeah a little.”
C “What kind of drugs are you doing?”
H “Whatever I can get, smack. I was on methadone.”
C “If you want a job you’ll have to get off that stuff. Do you want to go to a detox?”

This conversation would actually go on much longer but would end up with the counselor saying something like:” OK, I can get you into ___ place today at 2 PM. It’s in the Bronx. Can you get there? If not we’ll have someone get you there.”

At one point I walked around the back of the bus where there was a makeshift medical clinic. People were lined up to see the nurse, a short blonde woman with a face that exhibited both grit and kindness. She was attending to the feet of a very large, very dirty, very grubby man whose unkempt hair was tangled up in dreadlocks and was wearing only a filthy grey blanket over his tattered shirt. Carefully she unwrapped the rags that were his shoes and uncovered his swollen and bleeding feet and ankles. I almost passed out from the smell and the sight of his grossness. But the nurse didn’t blink. She handled what must have been his very painful appendages like they were delicate orchids and began to gently sprinkle water over them and clean his wounds. She then dressed them and swaddled them in some clean cloth she had pulled from a shopping a bag she had with her. The large man thanked her twice and hobbled away. At that moment I began my long association with New York City Relief.

We made the film and later a TV commercial that ran for several years.  With that film we raised lots of money. I also helped organize a benefit and every year help raise as much as I can to donate to the cause. The ‘Christian’ thing was never an issue. As I told Tom, it didn’t really matter to me what their point of view was if they had the heart and the  guts to go down into the streets and do the dirty work then they were getting my support.

There is more to the story but that will be for another entry.