2019: Three homeless deaths in PT

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On the day before his 54th birthday, Edwin Wisbey died of liver failure, another casualty of homeless life in Port Townsend, where untreated chronic illness, addiction and exposure are implicated in three deaths this year.

Like so many other Port Townsend residents, his death is mourned and felt throughout the communities he touched in the four years he lived here. Because he was homeless and single, there was little public notice of his Oct. 25 passing and all that is left of him now is a death certificate, his ashes and the stories on the lips of those who knew him.

Wisbey’s death is a sequel to the first homeless community death of this year: Cassandra Aldrich, 56, who was his fiancee. Wisbey told others he was with her in the tent where she died of hypothermia on Feb. 4 during a blizzard.

“He really changed after Cassandra died,” said Chaplain Richard Nordberg, who knew Wisbey from hosting a weekly free lunch at Kah Tai Park. “He became very quiet.”

“I think he died of a broken heart,” said Trevor Green, who helps serve lunch at Kah Tai Park.

Local attorney with Jefferson Associated Counsel Nat Jacob said he knew Wisbey from representing him and he was a kind and gracious soul. Aldrich and Wisbey were very deeply in love, he said, and Wisbey would often speak of her after her death saying he had lost a part of his life in her passing.

Wisbey and Aldrich met when she first moved to town, fleeing an abusive relationship, said Wisbey’s friend Johnny, who does not use a last name.

“They fell in love right away; they just clicked. He wanted to be with Cassandra,” Johnny said. “He used to pray to her every morning.”

Wisbey was a U.S. Army veteran, who had worked with his brother, Dallas, as a pipe-fitter and roofer, before the two lost their housing due to a fire in Shelton.

Dallas Wisbey said when his brother died at Jefferson Healthcare, he was there with him.

The process of taking care of his remains was difficult since he is homeless and lives on Veteran’s Affairs benefits.

Wisbey’s ashes are now spread in the same place as Aldrich’s, his brother said.

In official terms, Wisbey was “experiencing homelessness.” In the nationwide “Point In Time” count coming up on Jan. 23, he would have been counted as one of Jefferson County’s homeless.

Johnny and Wisbey were “tent mates.” They slept side by side underneath the stars for two years, separated only by the thin nylon walls of their tents.

In rain and shine, the tent mates would cook dinner together outside and play music over the radio at their tent camp on a friend’s yard in Port Townsend.

But Johnny said Edwin didn’t mind it.

“He liked living outside,” he said. “We were comfy, we’d cook every night.”

Dallas agreed, saying that Wisbey did not want to be under anyone else’s control and liked the outdoors and not having to answer to anyone.

This feeling isn’t uncommon for those in the homeless community, said Brian Richardson, manager of Port Townsend’s up-and-coming Recovery Cafe, which will provide services for people recovering from addiction and homelessness.

“Once you are homeless, there are a ton of barriers to get into housing,” he said. “And even if you do find housing, there are even more barriers: maintaining your hygiene, having transportation, paying insurance, car tabs, and more…. Some people will say, ‘You know what, it’s a whole lot easier to take care of just me.’”
Addiction and mental health issues add a whole new set of barriers for those searching for housing, Richardson said.

“We’d argue about what music we wanted to listen to, like best friends do,” Johnny said.

Today, Johnny said he will still sometimes call out from his tent to Wisbey out of habit.

“For a couple of weeks, I’d be in my tent and I’d yell out over at his tent, forgetting that he wasn’t there,” Johnny said. “I miss him really bad. It’s weird that you can go for so long being next to someone and then they’re just gone … I haven’t really even cried about it at all yet.”

Wisbey’s official cause of death is listed as acute alcoholic liver failure.

“He was all yellow, his eyes were yellow,” Johnny said. “He struggled for eight days, and finally went to the hospital. I could see that he was reaching the end.”

Cirrhosis of the liver is a condition that causes jaundice, like Johnny described. It’s often caused by long term alcohol abuse, but can also be the result of hepatitis B or C, or a condition called non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

Michael McCutcheon, an acquaintance of Wisbey who has been in recovery from addiction for 10 years, said addiction and homelessness are closely connected because people stop valuing themselves.

“When you’re broken, you settle with less than what you deserve,” McCutcheon said. “Even though Edwin died on the street in his disease, his life is worth just as much as the guy who sits in a nice house overlooking the bay.”

Beyond the possibility that Edwin struggled from alcohol addiction, being homeless itself can affect one’s health. Mike Johnson, manager of the shelter at the American Legion spoke about this issue in May when another local homeless man, Paul Gomes, died from heart failure in Port Townsend.

“It’s like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs,” Johnson said, referring to Abraham Maslow’s psychological theory that until people’s basic needs for things like food, water, safety and warmth are met, they are not motivated to seek more complex satisfactions.

“The more base the need, the less likely you’re going to address the upper needs,” he said, such as getting to a doctor’s appointment, or buying a cell phone to be able to call and schedule an appointment.

Jacob said he hopes that Port Townsend as a community can foster a deeper appreciation for the humanity in everyone and contribute to solutions.

“We have so much wealth in our community, there’s no excuse that people like Cassie and Edwin are dropping dead in our streets,” he said.

One way to do this, Richardson said, is to change our mindset.

“We need to shift the way we even think about addiction and homelessness, from ‘What’s wrong with you,’ to ‘What has happened to you,’” he said. “There’s always a story there. Have some compassion. If we blame them, that’s an easy way out for all of us.”