No one thought the thin blue plastic mattresses were very comfortable, least of all Rodney Moody.

Still, they were better than the cold ground. Moody, 55, often surrendered his backpack to a plastic bin at the Concord Coalition to End Homelessness overnight shelter and climbed into one of the forty metal framed bunk beds.

February 22 broke to a cold morning with temperatures in the teens and Moody decided to spend the night.

The early winter brought biting winds that added an extra chill. The snow mounds on sidewalks were speckled with foot holes that froze over. The traverse from the Coalition’s Resource Center to the Friendly Kitchen and back was a walk that Moody knew well. This winter, though, he’d barely made the trek.

Just before the new year, Moody was found unresponsive on a Concord street. For 37 days, he was in intensive care at Concord Hospital in a coma and on a ventilator. Family and friends circled around his bedside to say goodbye and volunteers dropped off handmade “get well soon” cards.

For weeks, Tina Kelly thought it would be a final goodbye with her cousin, who she grew up spending weekends with in elementary school. They’d drifted apart with age, only to reconnect as adults. By then, she was working to help people experiencing homelessness in Laconia. He looked to people like her in Concord for assistance – he had been unhoused since 2019.

As Moody emerged from his coma and started to improve, Kelly visited with a tattoo magazine she knew he’d like. With his impending discharge from the hospital, she gave him one final warning.

“I said, ‘Rodney, if you go back out of the street, you will die,’” she said. “’Your body can’t take it anymore.’”

In the earlier hours of February 23, Moody died while staying in the Coalition’s overnight shelter.

His death marked the loss of a longtime member of Concord’s homeless community and a life-long Granite Stater who knew the intricacies of social services in the city but never found a permanent solution.

At the end of March, friends, family, volunteers and community members packed into a room at CenterPoint Church to celebrate his life. Outside, a snow-sleet mix fell as David Keller led a service alongside Moody’s niece, Jyanna Brideau.

“We should not be needing to be grieving his death,” said Keller, a retired pastor. “It is an outrage that in this prosperous country, in this city where some houses are selling for over a million dollars, that anyone should be homeless.”

In Merrimack County, nearly 400 people currently experience homelessness, with the vast majority in Concord. Last year, a dozen people died in the city while unhoused. For many, the only public recognition of their life and death comes on the longest night of the year, at a candlelight vigil outside the State House in late December.

To his friends and acquaintances, Moody was “the Mayor.” His last name was indicative of a gruff demeanor, but those who knew him well said the facade didn’t last long.

“He was one to tell stories, to make everyone laugh and to sit there and be your shoulder no matter if it was wrong or right,” said Brideau. “He had the patience and the heart to be there for everyone.”

In the Friendly Kitchen, his voice would boom as he walked in for a meal and called out his signature saying: “All rise.”

In the winter shelter, he’d bicker with Kyme Locke as he would sleep sitting up and she’d plead with him to lie back down.

On the street, Deborah Eckland would find him in his designated chair under the bridge. She sat with him when she had few other people to turn to during the 22 months when she too experienced homelessness, praying that she wouldn’t hit the two-year mark without a roof over her head.

“The moment that he hugged me, the moment I was in homelessness just disappeared for me,” she said. “I felt a moment of safety in his arms that no one could give me when I was on the streets.”

At CenterPoint, Eckland counted at least 20 people who she knew experienced homelessness but had since found their own place. Here, they gathered to celebrate the life of someone who faced a different fate.

Moody came close. Before his death, he’d been moved to the top of priority waitlists for housing in Concord.

But a criminal background complicated his chances. He had been a registered sex offender since 1998.

Experiencing homelessness in Concord means doing a lot of walking. Moody often traversed from Saturday lunch at CenterPoint Church, through downtown to the Friendly Kitchen tucked away off of Interstate 393, back up the hill to the overnight shelter in the winter.

Brideau wanted to honor her uncle by doing the same.

As the sun began to set, Brideau changed out of her green floral dress and flip-flops into a blue hooded sweatshirt, black yoga pants and sneakers.

With a large walking stick in one hand and a battery-powered tea light in the other, she led a procession down North State Street, snaking around the Capitol and along Main Street to the Coalition’s Resource Center.

For Moody, taking even a few steps into the Friendly Kitchen to get a dinner plate this winter was a feat.

Managing chronic illness without a place to call home only complicated an already delicate situation. Not to mention, this winter stretch was so cold that volunteers and nonprofit staff worked extended hours many weekends to provide continuous shelter.

Somedays, he’d tell Brideau from his hospital bed that he wasn’t ready to die yet. He wanted to be back outside with his adopted family on the street, sharing a meal and enjoying a beer.

Other days, he knew it was his time. He wanted to be back with Jess Foote, his fiance who died in 2013. He didn’t want to burden anyone.

“Seeing us all come together right now is the one thing he would always want,” said Brideau. “Yes, it hurts he left us so soon, but we need to think he is no longer in pain and he went home to his wife where he’s been wanting to be since she left.

 

Michaela Towfighi can be reached at mtwofighi@cmonitor.com. Go to concordmonitor.com to read more of her stories.