Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 21, 1991 TAG: 9104210013
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PETER BAKER The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
He served in Vietnam and was awarded three Bronze Stars. He put himself through college and graduate school. He dove headfirst into the rough-and-tumble world of politics in the hills of West Virginia, ascending to leadership of the state Republican Party on the strength of his slash-and-burn tactics. At the height of his success, he fancied himself the Lee Atwater of the Mountain State.
So, like many before him, John F. King decided it was time to graduate from the farm team and move up to the big leagues: Washington.
But something went terribly wrong. Contracts for his political consulting business dried up. Checks began bouncing. Clients stopped returning phone calls. And in the space of a few months, King had lost his business, his girlfriend, his apartment and his way of life.
Suddenly, incomprehensibly, the political wunderkind from West Virginia found himself wandering around the nighttime streets of Old Town Alexandria, looking for a park bench to sleep on. Suddenly, he found himself staying in shelters for the homeless with men who described the best way to take a straight razor to someone's throat. Suddenly, he found himself pumping gas, stuffing envelopes and answering telephones in a vain search for a permanent job.
"I guess I wanted to prove I could make it here," he said, adding softly, "I guess I didn't."
As King tells his story, no one factor emerges as the reason for his decline. The economy, of course, was bad, but as King views it, his rise-and-fall story is more about his personal arrogance and failure, of unexpectably hitting bottom but not being able to ask for help.
His case contradicts the stereotypical image of the homeless: He is not mentally deranged, nor a product of poverty. Friends say he has no drinking or drug problem. He is a college-educated man from a middle-class upbringing who discovered his own limitations at the same time he learned that homelessness is not merely an affliction of the ghettos.
"I found out it didn't take much to waylay someone," King said.
A native of the small town of Iaeger, W.Va., King, 40, said he came to Washington in 1988 and set up a one-man firm called Palladin Consulting, using post office boxes, fancy letterheads and a little "smoke and mirrors" to build an impressive front. "I had a great illusion going," he said. "There were people out there who thought I was one hellaciously large company."
But according to King and his professional associates, his intense personality and undiplomatic style burned bridges among fellow Republicans and turned away potential business.
"He would rub some people the wrong way on occasion," said Fred F. Holt, a Charleston, W.Va., physician who enlisted King to run his unsuccessful 1984 bid for the state Senate. "He will sometimes just say things very bluntly without thinking about them."
It all unraveled in about eight months. Early last year, King said, he began finding it tougher to get work; some contracts were not renewed, and others that were regular sources of work had cut out funding for his services.
As his bank account drained dry, King knew his situation was becoming more precarious. He finally began distributing resumes in August, but he declined the only nibbles he received, saying the proposed salaries were far too low.
Finally, in October, he was evicted from his $725-a-month apartment.
From the moment he walked into Carpenter's Shelter in north Old Town the next day, he stood out.
Among all the sneakers, the ragged, hand-me-down clothing and the hard, worn-down faces, King wore his gray three-piece suit with the tie loosened, looking like a corporate benefactor who had lost his way.
"The first night I went to Carpenter's Shelter, I walked in the door. They said, `Who are you?' And I said, `I was someone once.' I was. I had lunch at the White House once. I used to walk into senators' offices and congressmen's offices," King said.
King had many people to turn to - his ex-wife, his parents, his brothers, his friends - but the shame of failure, he decided, was worse than the ordeal of the shelters.
"I couldn't face it," he said. "I had become everything I had loathed all my life. I just wanted to become anonymous and withdraw. I just ran and hid."
Dora King, his 75-year-old mother who still lives in Iaeger, said that if her son wants to return home, all he needs to do is call collect. "He's just as welcome to come home as he can be," she said.
King said that after eight weeks at Carpenter's, three weeks at the city shelter and a week at another shelter, in February he got fed up with the rules and began hopping from one friend's house to another. After cleaning himself up, he now interviews for jobs, visits a therapist and reflects on his predicament.
by CNB