ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, September 13, 1996 TAG: 9609130163
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: NEWS OBIT
SOURCE: DIANE STRUZZI AND BETTY HAYDEN SNIDER STAFF WRITERS
HE WAS A PANHANDLER who liked to put dignitaries on the spot. He knew the streets - and he died there.
His given name was Clarence Wright. But people knew him as Captain Charlie.
Each day, the 64-year-old man journeyed east along Campbell Avenue Southwest, often stopping at newspaper racks to look for forgotten change.
He was the street person who prided himself on begging money from the dignitaries and celebrities who visited the City Market. Then-Gov. Douglas Wilder once gave him $20.
His uniform was a ragged beard, baseball cap, cowboy boots and umbrella. He never wore his dentures and rarely changed his clothes. Some estimate he panhandled about $40 a day.
Wright knew how to work the streets because he grew up on them, said friends and relatives. Sometime Friday, he died there.
At 11:30 p.m., a passing motorist found his body near Easley's Deli and Mart in the 3600 block of Shenandoah Avenue Northwest. Wright had suffered severe head injuries.
Police say it appears Wright was the victim of a hit-and-run accident. They reported his death Thursday, asking anyone who was in the area that night to call them at 981-2671 or 981-2672.
"We have zero leads," said Lt. Ramey Bower of the police department's traffic bureau.
Police waited nearly a week to publicize Wright's death, despite repeated inquiries by reporters at The Roanoke Times, who asked specifically whether a fatal accident had occurred that night, at that location.
Thursday, Police Chief David Hooper and his supervisors could not explain why Wright's death had not been released to the media earlier.
Early Saturday, officers blocked off Shenandoah Avenue searching for clues. But they found little. There were no skid marks, and they found no witnesses, Bower said.
"I don't see how anyone could have hit a human body and not know it," he added.
Wright was a fixture on the City Market. Few knew his name. But most knew the man - his slow-paced walk, his ability to stutter on cue, his talent for coaxing dollars out of passers-by, and his stories.
One of his yarns reveals the origin of his nickname, Captain Charlie:
Wright was a private in the Army. The day he left, he tried to hitchhike home. But his rank kept him from getting a ride. So when he saw a captain passed out in a bus station, with a spare uniform by his side, Wright seized the opportunity. He stole the uniform - and caught a bus home for free.
His friends remember Wright telling them about the day he scored his biggest success:
When Wilder visited the City Market, Wright nudged his way through the crowd and the governor's security. As he stood in front of Wilder, he said, "Look, fella, I need some money and a place to stay." Wilder, surrounded by media, dug into his pants pocket and came up with the cash.
"He was famous for putting dignitaries on the spot," said Officer L.C. Ollie, who patrols the City Market. "What could they do? They'd cough something up."
Panhandling appeared to be a job to Wright, who made a point of looking the part, say some who knew him. He never missed a day on the Market, befriending the shopkeepers who often gave him free food and drink.
His advice to others whose trade kept them walking was to take care of their feet.
"If your legs go, everything else goes," Ollie remembers Wright saying.
Wright walked everywhere he went. In the Hurt Park neighborhood, he was known as "the mayor." Once he helped build Hurt Park Elementary School, relatives said. Later, the children would give him spare change.
"These were poor kids who were doing this," said Ollie, who lives in the Southwest Roanoke community. "The neighborhood respected him."
No one knows why Wright was walking along Shenandoah on Friday night. The neighborhood, nearly a mile from the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salem, was not one he was known to frequent, although his friends sometimes saw him at the VA.
Robert Martin, Wright's uncle, last saw Wright Friday morning on Patterson Avenue Southwest. They spoke briefly and Wright walked on.
"He was like a street person," Martin said. "[But] he was a well-liked person all over this community."
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