[Extended Transcript]

Transcript Includes Mature Material, Audience Discretion is Advised

INTERVIEWER: Do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself? Maybe where you're from, what you like to do — anything.

BRIAN: My name is Brian Morrow.

BRIAN: I grew up in Pittsburgh and stayed there until I was about twelve, when we moved to South Carolina after they shut down the steel mills in my hometown. I lived there for about 38 years before I came out to Oregon. I've been out here about four years now.

INTERVIEWER: Is there anything you like to do in your free time?

BRIAN: I like to stay busy. I've always liked woodworking — lately I've been making walking sticks. If I find somebody who needs one, I'll give them one of the ones I've already made.

BRIAN: I don't charge anybody for them. It's just something that gives me something to do and keeps me out of trouble. It takes up a good bit of time, and it's something I really enjoy.

INTERVIEWER: How did you become homeless?

BRIAN: I became homeless when I came out here from South Carolina on the Greyhound bus. About fifteen minutes after I got off the bus, somebody hit me in the back of the head with something. I woke up a little while later with nothing but the clothes I was wearing.

BRIAN: I spent the first seven months in Portland homeless, until I found some people I'd known from South Carolina who were living out here. They took me up to their place in Woodland, but it didn't work out, so I came back down here.

BRIAN: I was working for somebody, and he ended up doing to me what most of the other people I've met out here did — he took everything I had. So I ended up on the street. It's taken a lot, but I clawed my way back up. I'm not going to let anybody hold me down for very long.

BRIAN: Terry's been a godsend to me. I couldn't have gotten to where I am now without her help.

INTERVIEWER: Can you tell us a little about how that happened?

BRIAN: I met Terry in October last year. Her granddaughter was moving from one apartment to another, and I volunteered to help. There were about five of us who came out to help, and I don't know what made her choose me, but she called me back a couple of times, and I started doing work for her one or two days a week here and there. We've become pretty good friends now — she helps me out when I need help.

BRIAN: I like having someone to talk to. We sit down, we eat together, we talk. If I've got something on my mind, I can talk to her about it, and she's there for me. She's been a rock.

INTERVIEWER: Before having Terry here for support, how did you get through it?

BRIAN: Honestly, I don't know. Before I came out here, my dad was killed in a bad car wreck back in South Carolina — somebody was on meth for five days, passed out behind the wheel after being up too long. It killed him instantly. My dad was my best friend. That was real hard.

INTERVIEWER: For the viewers who don't know — can you tell us what you do here, the yard work, the flowers you plant?

BRIAN: I come in a couple of days a week and take care of the flowers and the upkeep on the yard. I've picked up a few other customers since then, so I come in and do work one or two days a week, and it's helped out a lot.

BRIAN: It's therapeutic, coming in here and keeping up the yards, meeting new people. This neighborhood is a lot different from most of the places I've been around Vancouver and Portland — people here aren't stuck up, they're down to earth, they treat you with respect. Most people elsewhere don't even talk to you.

BRIAN: Everybody here has treated me really well. I love being in this neighborhood — I actually enjoy coming to work every day. I know I'll get true respect, that nobody looks down on me. When I was homeless, people looked down on me. That's hard to find around here.

INTERVIEWER: What specifically about the work has gotten you through a lot of it? How long have you been doing it?

BRIAN: I've been doing this landscaping work for about nine months now. Before that I was a carpenter, working with my dad in South Carolina — building houses, room additions, whatever came up. It gives me pride to look back and say, I did this, I put this together, and it looks good.

INTERVIEWER: How would you say being homeless compares to what life is like now?

BRIAN: Being homeless is rough. I didn't know anybody here when I first got here, so I didn't know where to go to find work. And even when I did find a place to look, nobody would hire me because I didn't have any experience here.

BRIAN: I didn't have a resumé to show anybody, and honestly didn't know anything about making one. I'd done construction my whole life — I don't know anything about paperwork. So I got by doing a lot of bottling and canning, stuff like that, to make money. But one thing I will say: I've never had anybody give me something I couldn't pay back, and I never will.

BRIAN: Terry's given me more than I could ever pay back. She's been there for me a hundred percent. My mom passed away two and a half years ago, on Christmas Eve, and I really don't have any family left. Terry's family now — she's been so good to me.

INTERVIEWER: Would you feel comfortable doing a dual interview? Terry, do you want to join in?

TERRI: Sure, if that's all right.

BRIAN: We volunteered to move her granddaughter from one apartment to another, and it went a lot better and quicker than we thought — it was a good move. I guess Terry liked how I went about doing things, because she's had me come do work for her here and there for about the last nine months.

INTERVIEWER: What are some of the best characteristics you've seen in him — the things that have carried him through all this?

TERRI: I've had homeless friends for decades, but here's the thing Brian has: the ability to keep fighting the fight. I'm not sure I could fight it myself, but I understand why people give up — it's so hard, and as a society we're not trained or taught how to treat homeless people well.

TERRI: When people say America is a classless society, that's the biggest lie there is. We're a society of classes, and tragically the homeless are at the bottom of the rung. But Brian just kept persevering. He'd call me ready to throw in the towel, and I'd say, well, I thought you wanted to get off the streets.

TERRI: At the time he was in a tiny house, and I told him, I thought you wanted your own apartment. He said, I do, I do. I said, well then it's going to take your favorite four-letter word: work. And he kept at it.

TERRI: One day he called and said, I'm getting my own apartment. I said, oh my God. Then a couple of weeks later he calls and says, I don't know, maybe they'll take it away from me. I said, what in the world would make you think that? That isn't how this works, Brian. You've earned it. You're doing the work, you're staying the course.

TERRI: Eventually I think he believed it. It takes a long time — even people who've never been homeless struggle to believe in themselves. But he has an apartment now, and he's very proud of it. He sends me pictures — my background is interior design, so he tells me about everything he's done, and he's proud of it, and so am I.

INTERVIEWER: Tell us how you felt in the moment you got your apartment.

BRIAN: It was more disbelief than anything. I wasn't going to believe it until I was actually in it. When it finally happened, I couldn't have been happier. It had been about three and a half years from the time I got off the bus out here to when I got my apartment, back in March of this year — almost four years.

INTERVIEWER: So you went from homelessness, to a tiny house, to your own apartment. The city of Vancouver has been your friend?

BRIAN: Yeah, they've been good to me. The City of Vancouver's been great to me. As far as people in the neighborhood go, some weren't so much there for me — I've had a few bad instances — but for the most part it's all been good.

INTERVIEWER: What was living in the tiny homes like?

BRIAN: It was a lot better than being on the street. They had heat, though no air conditioning when it got hot, and you didn't have to worry about going hungry. With the assistance I get from the state, I've always made sure to keep a lot of food on hand.

BRIAN: I like to cook, so it was nice having a kitchen there to make something each night. It was definitely a lot better than being on the street.

INTERVIEWER: Speaking to someone who was in your position three or four years ago, what's the biggest piece of advice you'd give them?

BRIAN: Don't give up. Don't let anybody tell you that you can't, because when they tell you that, they're lying to you. And if you let them tell you that you can't, you're giving up on yourself. Don't do that.

TERRI: I'd say don't give up. Even though it's so incredibly hard, I have intense admiration for every homeless person out there who's living to fight another day. There's a guy on one of my off-ramps — I see him whenever I go that direction, and I always check in on him, give him five dollars. He recognizes me now.

TERRI: From a mother's perspective, every homeless man and woman who crosses my path, I see them as the day they were born — somebody looked at that precious baby and had nothing but high hopes for them, even if they weren't able to help them. We all have family and friends who couldn't make the mark with their children, but every single human being deserves basic decency and respect.

INTERVIEWER: Do you have anything specific for people who have friends or family who are homeless — how do you keep the hope alive for someone in that position?

TERRI: I do, because — like Brian — I have strong opinions on that subject. I have friends who are well-off and have family members who are unhoused, and without exception, when I ask them about it, they say, I just can't think about it. And I tell them, then you're a coward. Thinking about hard things takes a lot of grit and guts, but you can't give up, and you have to encourage other people to do the same. All of my friends are givers, or they're not my friends.

INTERVIEWER: Brian, what would you say you're most proud of?

TERRI: Well, you earned it.

BRIAN: The thing I'm most proud of is my friendship with Terry. She's been there for me — there were times over the last nine months I wanted to give up, and she wouldn't let me. I'm proud to call her my friend.

TERRI: Brian finds it very difficult to believe that someone can love him. That's something a lot of us struggle with — all walks of life, especially men, because we're not always the smartest about it.

TERRI: Self-reflection, self-awareness, and self-acceptance are such powerful tools. I was born into very fortunate circumstances — I had my parents, both sets of grandparents, no struggling in the family. We were the quintessential middle-class American family. Once I got out into the world, I realized how fortunate I was, and that it was my responsibility to give back.

INTERVIEWER: Were there any moments during this that really stand out?

BRIAN: When you're out on the street, you don't really have time to think about what's good and what's bad — you're just trying to make it through every day. I can't think of any one thing off the top of my head that stands out as exceptionally good or bad. I just didn't have time to think about it that way. Anybody who says they had time to think about it while they were out there is lying to you, because it doesn't work like that.

INTERVIEWER: Can you explain more — why don't people experiencing homelessness have that time?

BRIAN: Because it's not like you're going to Walmart to pick out a pair of shoes. You're struggling every day to make whatever money you can for whatever you need. One of the biggest things for me was having marijuana — it helped a lot with my anxiety and my depression.

BRIAN: I had to find a way, every day, to make sure I had at least another smoke bowl before bed, just to slow my mind down enough to sleep. I never really had the luxury of slowing down long enough to think about things like that.

INTERVIEWER: So it's not that you don't have time to think about it — you're forced to deal with the problem itself, versus the privilege some people have of choosing not to think about it.

TERRI: Right — one side of that struggle has all the time in the world to think about it, and they don't care to. It's so much easier for people to sweep things under the rug than to actually use the wealth they have to help other people.

BRIAN: That's all Terry does is help. I don't care if she was down to her last ten dollars — if I needed it and asked for it, she'd help me with it.

TERRI: You'd have to pay me back, though.

BRIAN: Yeah — but there are other people out there who are wealthy, who have a child on the street, and treat it like it's not their problem. That's wrong. Why have a child in the first place if you're not going to help them through the good and the bad? It doesn't make sense to me.

TERRI: Let that be your guiding light — don't bring children into the world if you're not going to support them through thick and thin. Wrap it up, or better yet, get a vasectomy.

INTERVIEWER: Any other advice besides that?

TERRI: Take care of your own children. Don't sweep it under the rug because you think they'll embarrass you in front of your friends. If that's really how you feel about your children, give them up for adoption so they can have a better life. And yes — your kids will embarrass you, no doubt about it, whether you love them or not.

INTERVIEWER: Lastly — is there anything else important you'd like to share? A personal story, words of encouragement, anything at all.

BRIAN: One thing that stood out to me this morning, while we were waiting for you all to get here — I was out in the side yard raking, and Terry came out, looked at me, and said, 'Brian, don't get all sweaty out there.' I told her she sounded just like my mother. But that's the way Terry looks after me — she always has.

BRIAN: I appreciate her so much, and I appreciate the fight she gives. I appreciate anybody who does the work it takes to get themselves ahead in life, because you're either going forwards or you're going backwards, and I like to bet on winners. Going backwards doesn't get you anywhere.