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Homeless Woman, 'Mary,' Honored

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By VALERIE KALFRIN, The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 29, 2007

TAMPA - About four years ago, Mark Silverstein learned the two-story office building he had purchased came with something extra.

He didn't know what to make of Mary. She slept in the stairwell at 1009 N. O'Brien St., the new home of Silverstein's real-estate appraisal company. She stuffed her belongings in a first-floor utility closet.

Silverstein saw her sunning herself in the parking lot, with her graying brown hair, crinkly skirts, tank tops and sneakers. She told him when strange cars parked there overnight and when the sprinklers were mistimed and awakened her.

Mary wasn't her real name. She wouldn't share that with anyone, so Silverstein's co-workers and others in the neighborhood christened her differently. Mary. Linda. Speedy.

To Tampa police, she is an unidentified woman who died of natural causes about a week ago. Someone found her lying on the ground about 8 a.m. Dec. 22. She might have been in her 60s, wrinkled from her time outdoors.

Silverstein and others who saw her daily didn't know what kind of funeral she would have, but they couldn't let her go unacknowledged. So Friday, about 30 people from the neighborhood stood outside the stairwell with an arrangement of pink lilies. They told stories about her and prayed.

Mary told one person she had been homeless for 17 years. Another heard how her dead husband was coming for her someday. She mentioned a daughter to whom she didn't speak.

She refused anything new, repeatedly returning a fan and heater to a couple who purchased them for her. She accepted free food, preferably salads and healthful fare. She wouldn't accept donations of more than $20 and repaid the money in singles.

Jackie Cannon, 63, and Lois Styles, 80, who work at Prestige Cleaners, said she often fixed her hair in their mirror and weighed herself on their scale. She couldn't see the dial well, so Styles would call out the pounds.

"I always subtracted a few figures," Styles said.

Miriam Bliss, 48, who works at the 7-Eleven, often checked on Mary with a flashlight at night. Bliss said she chided her co-workers when they would put an "out of order" sign on the bathroom to dissuade Mary from using it.

"I would tell the kids, 'Look, she's part of the building. She pays for her food. She doesn't steal,'" Bliss said.

Although private about her own life, Mary remembered details about everyone else's. She knew whose children were in college, how many were married. She kept an eye on the neighborhood kids, too, like Florian Felton, now 20, who lives up the block with his nephews.

Felton said he was astonished when Mary congratulated him on graduating from Jefferson High School. "I always made sure you got home safe," she told him.

Some of the mourners likened her to a guardian angel. Silverstein said perhaps she's finally home.

He thanked those who had taken time to honor her. "We'll see each other in the community and we'll say hi, and we'll know why, because Mary brought us together," he said.

Reporter Valerie Kalfrin can be reached at (813) 259-7800 or vkalfrin@tampatrib.com.

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