Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 6, 1990 TAG: 9004060059
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
He traveled instead from the San Diego naval base to Seattle, Wash., to celebrate his freedom from military life.
"At first it was a good time, you know, wine, women, song," Hamel said. "After a month, I was scraping for food."
Hamel, a 1982 graduate of Patrick Henry High School, took to the streets.
"I had a sleeping bag, and the University of Washington campus had some pretty trees. There were some good alleys," he said.
Food was another problem.
Hamel apprenticed himself to regulars on the Seattle streets and learned "Dumpster diving."
He fished hamburgers, buns and french fries from the trash. He frequented the pizza shop that set out its leftovers for street people. He came to appreciate an edible nugget that was still warm and to overcome his revulsion at eating someone else's garbage.
He ate alfresco behind fast-food restaurants and found dessert out back of the doughnut shop, always easing through shadows in the back of the stores.
"Once you get over the smell and the thought of what you're doing, it can be easy," Hamel would later write. "Dumpster diving . . . was nothing more than a buffet meal."
But the luster wore off.
"It got scary. I had to slap myself and ask myself what I was doing," he said.
Hamel found work - convenience store clerk and later gym janitor - saved his money, and flew home to Roanoke. He is 25 now, working as an assistant warehouse manager at Ferguson Enterprises, a plumbing supply store in Southwest Roanoke.
He has his own apartment, and he's working toward a degree at Virginia Western Community College.
Among his courses this semester has been an English composition course, where he is one of 19 students. Their first assignment was to write a narrative - something touching on a personal subject.
"After 20 years of teaching, I enjoy reading these the most," said Walter Robinson, the course instructor.
But Hamel's essay hit Robinson like a sandbag to the gut.
Hamel's seven handwritten pages described his days in Seattle, and how he honed the art of Dumpster diving to a science.
"I think the subject matter of the homeless . . . somehow, such honesty. Reading about this `street buffet' . . ." Robinson is still groping to describe the essay's impact on him.
It is not award-winning prose, and Robinson's comments and grammatical corrections line the margins, but the understated power of the essay gushes from its matter-of-fact candor.
"I didn't think it was anything special," Hamel said. "I just wrote about something I knew about."
It is history now.
"I look back sometimes with my girlfriend at how far I've come. I've got nothing to feel sorry for," Hamel said.
Nothing. He survived his life's brief eclipse. He lived to tell, and to write, about it.
by CNB