Brother Joseph: The story behind the most inspiring man in Columbus

It is just past noon on Thursday, July 23, and I am sharing a bench with a man called Joseph Ramirez. He wears a camouflage cotton t-shirt, jeans, and a baseball hat, and sighs contemplatively at the sky, settling in for the interview. Upon his suggestion, we are both imbibing on the syrupy sweetness of our “favorite beverages” from Starbucks. His, a java chip frappuccino with extra whipped crème. Mine, plain coffee over ice with a shot of mocha. I ask if he minds the recorder in my left hand. He politely tells me no, but his strained neck and sharp intake of breath offer a different answer.

“You ready to get personal?” I ask, playfully nudging his shoulder in an effort to make him feel more at ease. He folds his calloused hands and places them in his lap before turning to face me with a pair of earnest eyes. “As ready as I’ll ever be,” he says. I press record.

When my older sister attended The Ohio State University in 1998, a man by the name of Don Robinson, more commonly known as “The Rapping Bum,” or “Help is on the Way,” was a campus institution. Originally from Mississippi, Robinson moved to Columbus in 1989, where he eventually became perhaps the most famous homeless man in the capital city. Delivering rhymes like, “Have no fear, I’ll drink a beer/ Lordy, Lordy, Lordy, I need me a forty,” and “A shirt that looks like a jacket is a shacket,” Robinson managed to bring a grin to the face of everyone that crossed his path. When he eventually passed away at the age of sixty in 2012, Reddit posts sprang forth like a cluster of cystic zits during finals week, obituaries appeared in campus publications and local newspapers, and my now thirty-five year old sister and her gaggle of gal pals toasted him to the sounds of his 1999 mixtape.

Like Mr. Robinson, the students of my generation recognize Joseph Ramirez not as a man asking for money, but as their friend. I have passed him on my treks to class every single day for the last three years, through snowstorms and sunshine alike. When I had gotten a particularly unfortunate haircut freshman year, he told me I would be beautiful if I were bald, and on my last day on campus before I left for my semester in London, we shared snowman cutout cookies and drank hot cocoa together. During the course of our twenty-five minute interview he is approached by three students, a professor and a teaching assistant, each one eager to hear the good word of the man seated beside me. His smile threatens to split his face in two. “I’m doing an interview,” he exclaims, excitedly pointing in my direction. I offer a polite wave, but their eyes never stray too far from Joseph. He grants them all a fist bump and sends them on their way before focusing his attention back to me.

Born in 1968, Joseph was raised amongst two brothers by two loving parents in Chicago, Illinois. He considers his childhood a relatively happy one, recalling memories of his family and their modest home in the city, and thriving in his elementary school history classes. But things did not remain this way. Joseph was born with a chemical imbalance in his brain that stunted any further education and provoked a plethora of negative behaviors throughout his teenagedom that would last far into his twenties. He began seeking psychological care at the age of twenty-eight upon finding himself fatherless. His, had fallen victim to what he describes as a “fatal attraction-like romance,” when an unidentified woman became besotted with the elder Ramirez only to murder him some time later. Due to his inability to procure a job during this troublesome time, he began shoplifting to make ends meet until years later when he ultimately became frustrated with the corruption of a big city, and the life he had adopted as a product of it.

In pursuit of a place to begin again, Joseph found himself in none other than Columbus, Ohio. It was intended to serve as a safer city to find his footing, reconnect with his brothers who had also become Columbus residents, and possibly earn an honest living. What it would become was Joseph’s very own promised land, and an oasis from the stifling desert heat of years past. He was able to live with his brothers and seek help for various psychological issues until eventually he was hired at The Hyatt hotel in the heart of downtown Columbus where he would make enough money to move into an apartment of his very own.

In just a few short years however, both of his brothers and their families would move to different parts of the states, one back to Chicago, the other to Orlando, Florida, and Joseph would lose everything again. In 2007 his beloved mother succumbed to cancer, sending Joseph spiraling straight toward his own demise. He was fired from The Hyatt, evicted from his apartment and forced to live on the street, entirely devoid of family, friends, or faith. Before I can discreetly wipe at the tears that had fallen and were now safely concealed behind the darkened lenses of my sunglasses, he swiftly begins to sing a different tune.

“But then Street Speech was founded and they gave me a job, and I started going to New Life church where I met my best friend, Chris and his wife Tara, and I was whole again,” he reveals in rapid succession like a child caught with a hand in the cookie jar. I get the sense that he is trying to comfort me, unable to bear the thought of me relaying a tale tainted by tragedies. I put the tears on hold.

Street Speech is a monthly social justice newspaper funded by the Columbus Coalition for the Homeless. Since its birth in 2008, it has served as a tool of empowerment for those experiencing homelessness and their advocates, and presented the voiceless with the proper platform to be heard and supported by the central Ohio community. Joseph represents one amongst many homeless men and women who are employed by Street Speech to sell copies, and to educate their more fortunate “fellow man” about an epidemic gone ignored. Though Joseph is unable to write for the publication due to a seeing impairment, he stands at the same corner every single day, near the very bench we are seated on at this moment, with a bottomless stack of newspapers and an intransigent will to spread the word of his brothers and sisters.

“I just pray that the end of August arrives quickly, because then the students will be back and business will be better. All I can do in the meantime, is stay humble and remain the nicest guy I can be.” Considering the rent for the room he is now able to lease above a restaurant downtown rests on this profit alone, and that he has straddled the lessening line of eviction since he moved in, one thing is for certain: The man has humble down to a science.

When I ask him if it ever feels hopeless trying to make a population of privileged college students care about a cause that has consistently been treated with carelessness, the answer is a resounding no.

“I love these kids. I wouldn’t have employment without them, and I truly believe that God works through them to help people. Even me.”

I am unconvinced. I suppose somewhere in my years spent with Joseph, I’ve become embittered by the numerous occasions I have seen his efforts met in a manner that is inexcusable for another human being to be treated.

Aware of my skepticism, he adds, “You know, of course I realize there are negative people out there, I used to be one of them. But I just do what I can to be kind to them. In the end, if we get a cut, we all bleed the same blood.”

I make a mental note of that proverb, and realize that sadly I am nearing the end of my questions.

“If you could tell people one thing about homelessness, what would that be?”

“If everyone helped one another,” he pauses to wet his lips, and I suspect, to choose his words more wisely before he begins again. “I just think that if everyone sacrificed even a little bit of what they have for their fellow man or woman, that would be enough to make the world a better place.”

“I think that too,” I tell him, mechanically shaking my head in confirmation. He opens his mouth as if to say something, but closes it not a millisecond later. The man before me has more on his mind than he lets on. I close the notebook on my lap, and raise a brow, daring him to say more. A beat of silence follows before my ears are met with that tire-on-gravel voice I have come to develop an affinity for.

“Also, I think that a lot of folks pretend these people aren’t here,” he gestures at the two seemingly homeless individuals that share the sidewalk with us, but secretly I know that he is also referring to himself. “But they’re here, and they are only human.”

I take a moment to digest his words, and decide that I don’t want to end the interview on this note before I ask him one final question: “When is the last time you felt happy?”

He inhales a heady dose of oxygen, and scratches at his stubbled chin in contemplation, “Probably watching my nephews dance and act a fool,” he chuckles at a particular memory. “Also whenever I’m with my best friend Chris and his wife, like when we go to church or cook together,” he says, refusing to meet my speculative gaze. Again, I cannot help but feel as though there are words that remain unspoken. His chest heaves. I shake the sweating ice at the bottom of my Starbucks cup.

“This life is like a big hotel,” he begins. “Some people check out so others can check in, and not one of us is certain of our check out date, so I try to feel happy everyday.”

This time, it is me who cannot meet his gaze. In the three years that I have known Joseph, I have acted as a test-site for the detonation of many a truth bomb. But I knew in that moment that the aftershocks of that final one would shake my being until my own check out date.

Like any interview, I extend my hand to him and express my gratitude for his time. We both know that he could have been selling papers in those precious twenty-five minutes, so I offer to buy him lunch. His request is that of a very different kind of campus institution: Canes.

Shortly after bestowing upon him his very own box combo sans coleslaw in lieu of a second piece of Texas toast (a man after my own heart), I am stopped by a designer suited stranger that had been watching the entire exchange from the patio outside of Starbucks.

“You know that guy is wearing Ray Bans right?” he nods toward Joseph, “How homeless can he be?”

Hot tears prick the back of my eyeballs and all at once my mouth becomes a lethal weapon. The chamber loaded with verbal bullets that would no doubt fatally wound this man. I want to tell him that Patrick Bateman wanted his suit back, or that his BMW looked used.

I want to tell him that the sunglass wearer was my friend, a human being that has lost everything, yet is in possession of more than either one of us could ever dream of. But then I remember the words of a very wise man: “I just try to be kind. In the end, if we get a cut we all bleed the same blood,” and decide that it is probably in my best interest to simply shake my head, cross the street, and blow a kiss to that guy in the Ray Bans. A man called Joseph Ramirez.