BillLindau

Homeless man goes through area on cross-country crusade

By Bill Lindau
These past few weeks many Robeson countians have seen a tan bearded man pulling a trailer piled high with clothes and other items, accompanied by an elderly woman and a dog.
Roy Gleiter says between 500 and 700 people in this county have come to help him, his mother Deborah Cowden and her dog Poofer, as a stop on their journey across the United States to call attention to the plight of the homeless.
“I appreciate the kind of hospitality given me by the people of this county,” Gleiter said. “I hope they can pass this spirit to other communities.”
Gleiter and his mother have gone on this protest march for about a year, following the destruction of their Mississippi home in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
“I’m doing a big old U – from Washington (state) to Washington (D.C.), with a ‘U’ in the middle,” he says. “You gotta have a sense of humor when you’re doing something like this.”
They have traveled through such states as Mississippi, Colorado, Idaho, Washington State, Oklahoma, Kansas, Utah, New Mexico, the northern tip of Texas, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia. Last fall their protest march took them through Hoke County, where the Raeford News-Journal published a feature on them. Gleiter says he manages one to three miles a day pulling the trailer, which now weighs 6,700 pounds with all their things on it, many of which are donations.
“After Katrina, it only weighed 2,500 pounds,” Gleiter said.
Many people have stopped to give them such things as food and other supplies. Some have pulled the trailer a short way with their vehicles.
The Robeson Journal met Gleiter and Cowden Sunday afternoon on N.C. 710 just outside Pembroke. Local residents Tommy Clark and Leon Jones were hitching Gleiter’s trailer to Clark’s pickup, and they pulled them about a mile up into Harper’s Ferry Road. Gleiter said they were heading down U.S. 74 West toward the mountains. First, he was going to see an area mechanic about fixing the brakes on his trailer. After traveling through the mountains, he plans to head to Washington, D.C., to talk to the nation’s lawmakers.
He sang the praises of local law-enforcement officials for helping him out and not giving him, his mother and their dog a hard time.
Gleiter said people in many other areas have not been so friendly.
“Out of 11,387 encounters I’ve had with police, 1,591 have threatened to put me in jail, put my mom in a mental hospital, put my dog to sleep or shoot him and throw away everything I own,” Gleiter said.
“My crime?” he says. “Sitting around, standing around, vagrancy.”
“People in this county are enormously friendly,” he said. “The county, the sheriff have been exemplary.”
He has had some hairy moments here, however. “Someone threw some big rocks at my trailer last night,” he said on Sunday.
Another time, he heard gunshots around the side of the road where they were resting.
Gleiter does not carry weapons. “I trust my heavenly father,” he said.
“Plus, I’ve got a bad attitude.”
Gleiter, 49, made his living selling DVDs and CDs in traveling shows, before Hurricane Katrina struck the Deep South. The trailer he used was the only piece of property that was not destroyed. He doesn’t have a driver’s license. If he or his mother require major medical attention, the Vietnam-era Army veteran has V.A. benefits.”
Otherwise, “we’ll pray a lot,” Gleiter says.
Gleiter says he does not ask for anything on his protest march across the U.S.; many people who see him, his mother and the dog take it upon themselves to help them out.
“I’ve got the greatest sponsor in the world,” he says. “I’ve got my heavenly father.”
He says he hopes his protest march will not only call attention to the plight of the homeless, but of the indigent in general, especially people who cannot afford health insurance.
“A lot of homeless people ended up on the street because of health issues,” he says. “They were uninsured, they got sick, they couldn’t work, they couldn’t pay for their homes.”

posted by Bill Lindau @ 8:22 PM