Carol Baumert, a volunteer at the Day
break Homelss Shelter, has been work
ing at the shelter three days a week since
it opened Dec. 15, 1989.
Inside . . .
The Homeless Shelter
By Cindy Wostrel
Staff Reporter
In the front window, an old
suitcase sits with a pair of jeans.
It’s 7:30 a.m. on a Saturday
morning, and a balding, gray-haired
man wearing a gray cap, a flannel
shirt, a yellow T-shirt, blue jeans
and black boots grabs the cold
metal handle of the glass door,
opens it and smells hot coffee and
< igaretie smoke.
Through his ill-fitting bifocals
that look like they once belonged
to a woman, he secs two women
standing by coffee machines who
greet him by name. He sits at a
beige table on a red chair, opens a
newspaper and gets out the day’s
crossword puzzle.
Louis (not his real name), has
lust entered “Daywatch,” a resting
place for the homeless which
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first Plymouth Congregational
Church initiated the program as "a
place of hospitality," said Otis
Young, senior minister of the church
But visitors hear more than iust
the sound of percolating coffee
and the greeting of the volunteer
staff at this office.
f rom 7:30 a m. to 5:30 p m. seven
days a week, visitors hear the sounds
of ca rds being shu ffled, crosswords
being solved and conversations
ranging from where each person
slept the night before to the merits
of capitalism and communism.
The initial goals of the program,
according to volunteers Mary Mark
wardt and Jim Johnson, were to
provide a warm place and a cup of
coffee for the homeless. That has
since evolved, however, to include
being a place to gather and to play
games, they said One person even
rought in a radio, Markwardt said.
The office, located across the
street from the Plasma Center, has
beige walls decorated with pic
tures of women with pearl neck
laces and earrings, and pictures of
Dorothy Day, founder of the Catho
lic Workers Movement.
1 hose who come here decorate
the office. For Christmas, some
people made paper chains and drew
posters.
Many people walk by and look
in Daywatch’s window, while oth
ers walk by without noticing it.
Louis works on his crossword
puzzle with Markwardt. They search
for a three-letter word for a place to
sleep. “Bed," someone says.
A blond-haired man asks a man
in a cowboy hat where he ended
up the night before. The man in the
cowboy hat replies, “under the
bridge.”
At about 10 a m., Darwin Phil
lips, a Native American roofer, enters
and overhears Louis talking about
capitalism. Phillips joins the con
versation and tells Louis that the
money he makes helps him rent a
roach-infested place for his three
children and his wife.
Louis, whose 60ish face belies
the fact that he is only 44, tells
listeners later, around 2 30 p.m.,
that he advocates violent overthrow
of the government because, he says,
change cannot come from within
the system because the power struc
ture is entrenched.
Louis explains that he has been
homeless since he was 25. In his
youth, he had run away several
times from his family. Despite the
fact that his mother was French and
he was born in France, his father
prevented him from speaking
French, which he regrets. He says
he is applying to renew his French
citizenship.
“Do you mean to tell me that
spot labor isn’t slavery?” Lou is asks,
when told that slavery no longer
exists in the United States.
A pair of blue-suited officers
enter at about 5 p.m. and ask an
inebriated visitor who is unable to
function if she wants to go to
“detox,” the name for the Corn
husker Place Inc., a non-profit
corporation partially funded by the
State of Nebraska.
She declines their invitation and
they continue talking.
“We poor people have to be
nice to each other," Louis says to a
Native American woman as she
tastes the piece of Juicy Fruit gum
that he has just given her.
“How would you like to gel a
bachelor’s degree and not be able
to find work?” the blond-haired
man with metal caps behind his
teeth asks. “I know a couple of
people like that, one with a mas
ter’s degree.”
I he blond-nairea man rolls up
his shirt sleeve to show a scarred
vein on the inside of his elbow and
says that he will have to start a new
hole for plasma.
At least in Lincoln they’ll take
plasma, he says. In Florida, he says,
they only take whole blood. That
causes problems, Markwardt ex
Elains, because when a person gives
lood, they must wait longer be
fore giving blood again. When they
take plasma, they first remove the
blood, then take the plasma out of
the blood and return what is left
over. Since the white blood cells
replace themselves faster than red
blood cells, she said, people can
give plasma more often
At 5:30 p.m., only one dark
skinned, dark-haired man remains
at Daywatch. It is closing time for
another day, and Markwardt and
Johnson begin stacking the red
and blue chairs on top of each
other, putting the cards back into
the box they came from and clean
ing out the coffee machine. They
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