Peter Bis

Peter Bis died last week of an apparent heart attack. He was 61 years old. He grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, graduated from Western Michigan University in 1974 with a degree in history, spent a year in law school at Michigan State University, worked briefly as a hotel night clerk, and started a car-painting company. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and after spending several months of in-patient treatment began wandering around the country. “He never hitchhiked, but people would give him rides,” his brother James said. “He crossed the country two or three times. . . . He never drank alcohol or took drugs. He just smoked cigarettes and drank coffee and thought he was from another planet.”

For the past decade Bis has lived on the streets near Union Station in Washington D.C., no address, job, or phone. He claimed to be an alien from another galaxy, an enemy of the state, an aerospace magnate, and former Princess Diana lover. He claimed that Bis stood for “British Intelligence Services.” He often wore a lead-lined baseball cap wired with red lights.

He spent most of his time near the corner of Second Street and Massachusetts Avenue NE, between Union Station and Capitol Hill. He never begged for money. He used the restrooms at a nearby Exxon station, helping to keep them clean. When the weather got particularly cold, he was allowed to sleep in the station’s garage. His circle of acquaintances included Capitol staffers, economists, and waiters from area restaurants. They would bring him coffee, bagels, leftovers, and cigarettes and he would engage them in conversation, well-versed in current events by reading discarded newspapers. “He knew everybody here, everybody,” said a worker at the nearby Federal Judiciary Center. “If you stood here talking to him for 10 minutes, he’d greet 50 people by their first name. And then he’d ask about their spouses. ‘Hey Joe, how’s Judy? You’ve got a baby coming in two weeks, right?’ The guy had an incredible memory.”

An impromptu memorial has grown around an oak tree on his favorite corner where friends have left flowers, signs, and packs of cigarettes. A neighborhood church is organizing a formal memorial in a few weeks. There will be a crowd.

Our inclination is to paint the homeless in a monochromatic distance. But Peter Bis should remind us that the homeless are in this one way very much like all of us – diverse and not so easily known.