“It feels like the world has been lifted off my shoulders.”
That was the reaction of a Florida man whose recent stretch of homelessness in the bitter cold of The Dalles was ended by a local group that gave him an astounding Christmas gift: a 2004 van to get him and his teen sons back home to Florida.
He texted those words to the Chronicle from California last week, as he was already putting the miles between his family and the cold.
The heartwarming tale of outsized generosity began on a rather different note, however.
A month ago, a local man was driving by a building he owned and spotted a fellow bent over next to it.
He stopped his car and hollered out to him, “What the hell are you doing there?” He learned the man simply was getting some water for himself and his two sons, aged 16 and 18. They were camping nearby, he said, since their car had broken down on their way home to Florida from a family visit out west and they couldn’t afford to repair it.
The local man and his wife (all the local parties have asked that their names not be used) had taken to helping others at Christmas, instead of buying things for themselves. This Christmas, the benefactor wanted to help that man out by getting him back to Florida.
“I just got to thinking about it,” the benefactor said. “The guy had two kids down there. I went down looking for him, couldn’t find him.”
Then an article on homeless camps ran in the Chronicle on Dec. 1, and it pictured the Florida man, Dale Bozeman Sr., at his tidy camp. Police Officer Brent Larson was quoted talking about how he’d had to roust the Bozemans from a camping spot by the public pool.
He’d seen they were unprepared for winter, so he went to Salvation Army, which donated coats, sleeping bags and pads for the family. Then Larson drove them to a new, more hidden camping spot.
The benefactor’s wife asked the Chronicle to put them in touch with Larson. The longtime The Dalles police officer then trekked to Bozeman’s camp with the man’s name and number, telling him the good news that the man wanted to help fly his family home.
Larson said, “I think the whole thing is pretty cool that our community members have been so generous to help this family out.
“It’s hard to find the words to describe, it’s so nice and generous of this family to donate that,” he said.
Larson said Bozeman “was very thankful but he was also initially concerned, because it was airfare, about whether or not he would be able to take his dog with him.”
Bus fare had been the local man’s first thought, but airfare was only $50 more per person.
Then they learned the family had too much gear, including bikes, plus their dog. Greyhound, ironically, doesn’t allow pets on board, and flying a pet is too costly.
As Bozeman talked to the local couple —“He said God bless you a lot,” the wife recounted — he inquired if the money couldn’t be put toward an inexpensive vehicle instead.
And so the benefactor began working with local auto dealerships. One gave him a good deal on a van, then he got a tire store to put some tires on at a discount. The dealership did some work on the van to ensure it would get the family cross country.
The benefactor even had to help Bozeman renew his insurance, paying a required six-month premium to get it reinstated.
The benefactor has spent hours coordinating the monumental act of charity. The total tab is about $2,000, and he has five or six buddies who are chipping in on it.
He said that after many years of marriage, he and his wife don’t need anything for Christmas. “Why go through the hassle of trying to figure out something the other person doesn’t need, and try to find a place to keep it. Especially when it’s somebody that really needs something — we don’t need anything.”
The benefactor’s wife said her husband “saw a couple of polite, good kids and a dad who didn’t know what to do. He’s never been in weather like this.”
He’d also never been homeless, and talked about the struggle of dealing with field mice, she said.
She added that Larson felt the same way about the family as her husband did: “This is a nice family, they’re just having a spell of hard luck. They’re not into drugs and alcohol and a lot of things.”
Bozeman’s attachment to the family’s pit bull was a point in his favor. “They’ve had this dog since it was three weeks old,” the wife said. “They’ve had it for three and a half years, they’re not gonna give their dog up and I don’t blame them. [My husband] said it made him think even higher of him that he wasn’t willing to just turn the dog over to Home at Last. He cares about his dog and he cares about his kids being hurt by taking the dog away.”
Bozeman sent a second text to the Chronicle after his first speaking of the weight of the world being off his shoulders: “Thank you to everyone involved.”
When he finally arrived home in Florida a few days ago, he placed a call to the benefactor, and, through tears, thanked him again.
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