By Claudia Feldman
The Houston Chronicle
The scene in James Bute Park is straight out of Alice in Wonderland
In the midst of a distressingly hot, dry summer, it is raining and cool in the green space just north of downtown.
Of the dozen homeless men seeking refuge under a U.S. 59 overpass, a few are reading books checked out from the library and a few more are involved in a hotly contested game of checkers.
Behind them, Buffalo Bayou is a lush wilderness. To the right are winding paths that lead to impromptu camp sites. At the end of one path a man is cooking breakfast over a campfire.
“It’s like stepping through a portal into another world,” says Oskar Gonzalez-Yetzirah, mingling with the men as he walks deeper and deeper into the park.
“You a vet?” he asks.
It’s a question he and fellow outreach workers ask dozens of times a day. They work for United States Veterans Initiative, a nonprofit group trying to help as many as 3,500 homeless veterans in Houston and as many as 120,000 vets nationwide. The goal is to get veterans off the street, or pre-emptively, to stop their slide before they hit the pavement or the park.
“Call me Oskar,” he says as he distributes water bottles and hands out bus passes. He also holds the keys to drug and alcohol treatment, mental-health counseling, housing options, job training.
“You a vet?” he asks a tall young man in spectacles and a black T-shirt.
“I served in Iraq twice,” says Shaun Crump, one of the checkers players. “I wanted to do my patriotic duty, but I also thought my service in the Army would give me some security.”
Things haven’t worked out that way.
He landed a job but couldn’t hold on to it. Without a safety net, he lost his apartment and his car. And his parents couldn’t help – they were used to Shaun sending money to them.
Oskar says quietly, “Come see me for breakfast at our office on Friday. Anytime from 8 to 11.”
Oskar was born in a Galveston hospital 29 years ago. When he was just a few minutes old, his birth mother handed him to the young couple eager to adopt him.
But three days before the paperwork for his adoption was complete, Oskar’s new dad died.
“He was showing off a gun,” says Lettie Holte, Oskar’s mom. “It went off.”
Holte was only 23 at the time. A kindly judge advised her to forget about the infant Oskar and get on with her life. Besides, the judge said, Oskar needed two parents.
But mother and son had already bonded.
As Oskar learned to walk and talk, he and his mom spoke exclusively in Spanish. At day care, Holte realized one day, the toddler spoke only in English.
Two decades later, his language skills would help him in the military.
“He’s super smart and super curious,” Holte says.
Oskar acknowledges that not everything he did as a kid was quite so cute. He was bored in rural Needville, where he and his mom lived, and in the eighth grade, he decided to liven up a school Christmas party by spiking the cola drinks with alcohol.
Oskar was expelled from junior high, and he started that spring semester in an alternative learning center. The move was intended as punishment, but he thrived on what was essentially independent study.
At 16, Oskar converted to Judaism – he loved the faith that encouraged questions – and he changed and lengthened his name. At 18, he decided to skip college and join the Marines.
His mom just laughed when she heard that he had enlisted – she thought he was joking.
He was considerably overweight. And he had no experience with hard physical labor – he’d never even taken out the trash.
“I had it the easiest,” he explains, “so I chose the hardest.”
Holte realized he was serious when a Marine recruiter was knocking on their door at 5 a.m., ready for Oskar’s morning run.
With every step, the recruiter was bellowing about Oskar’s weight and slowness.
Holte sighs. “You could hear them from a mile away.”
By then Oskar knew he was gay, but he didn’t tell his family or his recruiter.
“Don’t ask, don’t tell,” he says. “I never sought special treatment, and at the time, nobody knew my lifestyle.”
