John A. Steele Sr. was cremated without ceremony. Only his estranged wife and children attended the brief service at the Charles L. Stevens Funeral Home in Locust Point. No words were spoken. No death notice appeared in the paper. No obituary was written.
Jane Steele loved her husband but couldn't live with him. She stayed married even after kicking him out of their Clement Street rowhouse 16 years ago. He had stopped working and turned to alcohol 16 years before that. She worked then in a factory, putting labels on cans, and she sewed dresses and cleaned houses to pay the mortgage.
John Steele was 70 when he died at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center a month ago, days after he collapsed in Riverside Park and broke his elbow near one of the benches he called home. His liver finally gave out after 32 years and countless bottles of gin.
"As long as he was sober, he was the greatest husband in the world," Jane Steele, who is now 69, told me. "When he was drinking, he was a lion with a great big roar. ... His death broke my heart. Needless to say, I was in love with him for a very long time. But drinking took over his life. He didn't care about anything except his next bottle."
I knew John Steele from my South Baltimore neighborhood, where it seemed everybody had a John Steele story. He was a menace on Fort Avenue, passing out on sidewalks and on doorsteps, a frequent customer of paramedics who resisted taking him because they'd have to spend hours cleaning the ambulance, a nuisance to cops because he steadfastly refused to get help.
Two months ago, I joined a community walk with the commander of the Southern District, Maj. Scott L. Bloodsworth, and John stumbled by us under the gazebo in Riverside Park. Residents cringed at the large man wearing piles of tattered overcoats, his worn face smothered by a white, dirty beard.
They all turned to Bloodsworth to ask what the police were doing about John. The major said he had repeatedly tried to get him into a shelter, but to no avail. The major told me later that he once spoke to John and his younger homeless friend for an hour at Riverside Park, talking about his time in the service and life in Baltimore.
"It's frustrating because I really wanted to give this guy help," Bloodsworth said. "They had a routine. They weren't up there in the day with families and children. They came up at night to sleep under the pavilion where it was safe. I told them, 'I understand, but you can't sleep here in the park.' I asked if there was anyplace I could take them, if there was someplace they could go. They weren't interested. They were pretty set in their ways."
