the IMAGESMITH®: Where is Bill Dunn?

Saturday, December 01, 2007

Where is Bill Dunn?

Labels: Aqualung, Charleston, Homeless

13 Comments:

That 1 Guy said...: Aqualung...

I tried, but I couldn't stop the smirk.; 3:25 PM EST
Imagesmith said...: Tuesday January 15, 2008
Aqualung still missing
by Kris Wise
Daily Mail staff

In December 2004, when Charleston was in the midst of a frigid early winter, Leslie Clay called her husband with an urgent request.

Bill Dunn has been a fixture on Charleston’s streets since at least 1974. While he’s been a subject of fascination for many people, not much is known about his past...
She needed a house for a friend who'd been living on Charleston's streets. She'd offered numerous times - in the four years she'd known him - to put him up somewhere or find him a place to stay, but he'd always refused. This time, though, it was cold outside, and he was tired of trying to find places to stay warm.

Leslie's husband - contractor Carl "C.F." Agsten Jr. - scrambled and found a little house on the East End. It was rental property that was then up for sale. They took the man to see it, and he moved right in. "Then we knew we had no choice, so we had to buy it. He didn't want to leave," C.F. said.

The man, who'd lived on the streets for decades, spent a year and a half setting up house. He got more comfortable with the idea of having a home, eventually even emptying out the shopping cart that had been by his side all those years he slept on the streets.

Then Leslie and Carl decided to renovate a little bit, clean the place up and make repairs that were badly needed if the man was going to stay there permanently.

In the summer of 2006, workers showed up and started hammering. They were fixing cabinets and working on the walls. The man was frustrated. He didn't like change, and worse, he didn't like people being so close to him. When the crew moved out the refrigerator to replace it, it was the last straw. He packed up his stuff and left without saying goodbye to C.F. or Leslie, who by now thought of him almost as family.

The man was Bill Dunn, known as Aqualung.

And nobody has seen Charleston's legendary street person since.

Origin of Aqualung

People who live or work in Charleston got very used to seeing Dunn rolling his shopping cart through the streets, sifting through Dumpsters or just sitting somewhere, observing the world.

He's been part of the city's landscape since at least 1974, according to newspaper stories chronicling his activities, but not a great deal is known about his background.

Rumors abound. The stories cite people who say they heard he was a federal agent who had a breakdown and wound up homeless with no identity. Some say he was a high-powered attorney whose wife left him. Heartbroken, he couldn't go on, eventually losing his job and winding up penniless and alone.

The mystique surrounding him only heightened in 1978, when he helped police solve a murder. After a local nightclub dancer was found dead, Dunn found evidence in a Dumpster and handed it over to officers.

The Aqualung nickname was bestowed on him sometime in the 1970s by announcer Benji Hardman at Watt Powell Park. An avid baseball fan, Dunn would linger around the ballpark, trying to watch Charleston Charlies games through the fence. Hardman pointed him out over the intercom one night and said he looked just like the seedy-looking character on the cover of Jethro Tull's 1971 album "Aqualung."

"We didn't really have any feelings about that name one way or another at first, but after we got to know him, we (researched) it and found out what Aqualung really meant, what that song was about," C.F. said.

A sample of the lyrics: "Sitting on a park bench, eyeing little girls with bad intent, snot running down his nose, greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes."

That is Aqualung, according to the title song.

"It's the 'dirty old man' sort of thing, and that's just not Bill," C.F. said. "So, no, it's not a great name for him. It's just so derogatory. He never really talked about it, but we got really upset about it."

It's undeniable many people in Charleston feel a strong connection to Dunn. It's hard to say why. There are dozens if not hundreds of others who spend their lives on the city's streets. But Dunn is the only one who inspires citywide - even nationwide - searches when he decides to change his routine.

People who've lived in Charleston all their lives and those who've moved away think of him as a symbol of the city. There's the Capitol dome, the Boulevard, the old Sunrise mansion and the image of Dunn pushing his shopping cart.

For the most part, Dunn has kept to himself.

"Leslie and I were as close to him as anyone," C.F. said. "I think the whole community kind of watched his back, but I don't think there's anyone who knew him as well as we did."

Leslie is the daughter of the late philanthropist and Daily Mail publisher Lyell Clay.

The strange relationship between Dunn and one of Charleston's most prominent families started in 2000, when Leslie, now a minister, moved back to her hometown after several years away.

A coffee fanatic, she spent a lot of time downtown at one of Dunn's haunts, Taylor Books.

"She offered to buy him coffee and spend some time with him, and over time they became friends," C.F. said.

Dunn was hesitant at first, but Leslie won him over. With search-a-words.

"He loves puzzles," C.F. said. "Crossword puzzles and find-a-words. Early on, when he wasn't sure about Leslie, she would bring him find-a-words and they would do them together."

It took work to be Dunn's friend. He generally doesn't trust people. C.F. said he wouldn't take food from anybody - even if he was very hungry - unless he either knew you well or the food was wrapped and he was sure it was safe.

He didn't talk to too many people, either.

"I think it was persistence," C.F. said about the friendship that evolved between him, his wife and Dunn over six years. "Leslie is very persistent. I came along really by association, but he grew to trust me, too. He'd hop in my car and we'd go to Wendy's and have a meal. And those were things that just didn't seem possible even a couple years before.

"Early on, we invited him up to our house, and he might have wanted to go, but it would have required getting in a car with Leslie, and he just wouldn't do that at first. After a while, he would just hop in and we'd drive around and he'd go all over the place with us. But leaving his cart behind was always an issue."

The Cart

It looked like a grocery cart piled high with junk.

Dunn would typically push the thing over the alleys and sidewalks by holding on to one or two of the many broom handles that jutted out from a mountain of overstuffed plastic bags.

"It went with him everywhere," C.F. said.

Even after Leslie and C.F. moved him into the little house, Dunn brought the cart indoors. He kept it in a little laundry room and it took him months to start putting his belongings elsewhere.

"He eventually started using the closet, but he would never hang anything up," C.F. said. "He would pile it on the floor."

The laundry room in the house had a lot of little hooks on the wall, and after a while Dunn starting moving his plastic bags out of the cart and hanging them up.

The cart was kept indoors at night, but Dunn continued to take it out each day as he meandered through the streets.

The cart held Dunn's books, magazines and newspapers. He was a voracious reader.

"And he had a lot of clothes," C.F. said. "And a lot of food, perishable food.

"To this day, I don't know how he kept from getting sick," C.F. said. "It wouldn't be unusual for him to salvage meat somebody had thrown away, things that hadn't been cooked but were still good. He seemed to know when it was good to eat and when it wasn't."

He started using the kitchen in the house rather than always eating out of the cart. C.F. and Leslie would make grocery store runs and take care of his errands at the Rite-Aid on Washington Street East.

He relaxed a little about his belongings, often letting Leslie organize his things or clean up the jumbled heap in the closet.

He was less keen on letting people help him with his appearance.

C.F. said it was a huge step when Dunn started letting them buy him new clothes, but he would wear them only on top of his regular street gear.

"I really think it started as a defensive mechanism," C.F. said. "If you don't want people to get too close to you, you can take care of that pretty easily (with your appearance)."

Dunn would occasionally accompany C.F. and Leslie to public functions.

"He went to two Christmas Eve services with us, and the second year, Leslie told him she'd really like to clean him up a little, and she asked if she could wash his hair," C.F. recalls. "Oh no. He was so funny. He said, 'You just worry about your own hair.' "

Getting closer

C.F. said Dunn is smart, well versed in current events and a witty conversationalist.

He's also somewhat of a jokester.

"He has a big-time sense of humor," C.F. said. "He's always cracking jokes, and he laughed all the time. Part of it was a nervous kind of laugh, but also he just found so many things funny."

And he's obsessed with sports: reading about them, talking about them, watching them.

"We took him to a couple of West Virginia Power Games, but the problem there was he wouldn't abide by the no-smoking rules," C.F. said.

"Smoking and drinking coffee were his two vices, his only two vices as far as I know," he said. "He never drank alcohol, to my knowledge. He would sometimes find it and bring it home, but it was funny because he would never do anything with it. It would always just sit there."

C.F. and Leslie tried to find out when Dunn's birthday was so they could celebrate. He wasn't forthcoming with the information, for one reason or another.

Dunn's true age has been a great source of speculation for many Charlestonians.

He once told police he was born Oct. 20, 1940. That would making him 67 now.

C.F. doesn't think he's nearly that old.

"When you get up close, his face looks so much younger," he said. "And he's so strong. He's stronger than I am."

The couple picked a random date - Oct. 31, Halloween - to throw Dunn an annual birthday party. Knowing his tastes, those invited always brought him hats, which he adores.

"He loved it," C.F. said. "He'd try them all on. He got the biggest kick out of it."

Those close to him said it took a while to get used to all his quirks, least of which was the way he talked.

He always referred to himself as "we."

"It could get confusing," C.F. said. "In his house there was a big lounge chair downstairs that somehow one day made its way up to the second floor. I asked him how it got up there. And he said, 'We moved it." And I said, 'You and who else?' And he said, 'No, we put it on our back and took it upstairs.' "

C.F won't say if Dunn's peculiar way of speaking was a sign of some deeper problems.

"I won't make a diagnosis," he said. "It's not that simple. He definitely had issues.

"He was very concerned about his well being," he said. "But part of that was just being smart."

C.F. surmised that Dunn was raised somewhere in the Northeast and was educated, but probably not college-educated.

He never talked too much about his past. He mentioned having a mother and an aunt, but gave no details about where they lived or where he grew up, C.F. said.

"He never gave us names or places," he said.

What about the talk of Dunn being an undercover operative or an attorney in another life?

"I don't think any of that is true," C.F. said, laughing.

But Dunn was well traveled.

He had picked oranges in Florida, spent time in the Midwest and was very familiar with cities all up and down the East Coast.

"When I went on a road trip, I'd tell him where I was going and he'd give me three or four ways to get there," C.F. said.

A lot of the information his friends had about his past came from other people, people who'd been watching him from afar over the years.

C.F. said, "We have a good friend who's been in Charleston for a long time who remembers him going to the post office regularly as a young man and getting packages from his family. Over time, he broke those ties."

C.F. said he once got Dunn to talk about how he came to be on the streets of the capital.

"He said he had first stayed in the Roosevelt Hotel (in downtown Charleston), which was like the Holley Hotel in that you could rent it by the week. For one reason or another, he lost that room and that was it. He said he'd been on the streets ever since."

If there was any word to describe Dunn, it was "private."

C.F. and Leslie were hesitant to talk about their friendship with the man - Leslie never did give an interview.

But C.F. said they decided to share some things about Dunn's life for one reason.

They're worried about him.

"It's really kind of upsetting," C.F. said. "Because when you try to help someone, you wonder (when he's gone) if your involvement had anything to do with it.

"I just want this to be a chance to get people thinking about him, and there has to be someone, somewhere who knows something," C.F. said. "It's not like he actually disappeared."

Then he was gone

Other folks who knew Dunn - they either saved aluminum cans for him, chatted with him or kept track of his meanderings - got used to not seeing him for long stretches of time.

He would disappear occasionally. Usually, it was during the winter when he'd make his way for Florida.

In 1985, he went missing for about five months and then showed up in May after a winter spent in a Washington, D.C. warehouse.

In 1995, he apparently took his cart on a 125-mile trip north. After being gone from Charleston for about a month authorities tracked him down in Tyler County, where he had been picked up for allegedly brandishing a knife. The charge was dismissed, but Dunn was ordered to undergo an evaluation at a state mental hospital, which he described to a reporter as having "beautiful" accommodations.

So when he went missing in the summer of 2006, most people expected him to show up at any time, when he was good and ready.

But then weeks turned into months, and then the months dragged on.

"I haven't seen him at all, and that's very odd," Kim Pauley, director of the Charleston Ballet, said recently.

Dunn would hang out a lot in the alley behind the ballet's downtown studio. Pauley would save aluminum cans for him, and contacted police last summer when she realized it had been a long time since she'd seen him.

"By now, several people have asked me, wanting to know where he is, what's going on," Pauley said. "I would love to know what happened to him."

Karen Pauley has worked at Taylor Books for years.

The staff there was also quite familiar with Dunn. Capitol Street was one of his familiar haunts, and he'd frequently stop at the bookstore and coffee shop.

"We haven't heard anything from him or about him," Karen said. "It's been since at least July of 2006. He would come in and get a coffee, and we'd see him walking by all the time. And then he was just gone."

C.F. said that since he'd met Dunn, he hadn't taken off.

He said he had been a little nervous about doing the renovations to Dunn's house in 2006.

"I was concerned about it," he said. "I didn't know if he would be OK with that."

The work crew called C.F. one day in August, raising concerns because Dunn had seemed very agitated about the refrigerator and had taken off in a huff.

When the workers showed up the next morning, it was clear Dunn hadn't come home the night before, C.F. said.

It took several days of wondering, waiting and looking all over the city before reality set in.

C.F. also got news from a friend that made him think he wouldn't be seeing Dunn any time soon.

Tegan Easterday, manager of Schwabe-May, kept an eye on Dunn when she ran The Dresser, once located beneath Taylor Books.

"I was used to just seeing him around all the time, watching him walk by," Easterday said.

She was familiar enough with Dunn's habits that she got worried one day that summer when she saw him walking along the road near her home, not far from Kanawha Turnpike and Jefferson Road.

"It was so unusual, because he's never in South Charleston," Easterday said. "I called a worker at the bookstore, and I asked if he was OK. He had his big hat on and everything, and he just seemed different.

"That was August of 2006, and as far as I know, no one has seen him since then," Easterday said. "I feel like I'm the last person who saw him. That's what was so weird."

It was earlier in the summer of 2006 that something else had happened, something Dunn's friends say might have helped spur his departure.

Artist Rob Cleland unveiled a series of artworks featuring Dunn - watercolors and photographs that were part of a series called "Charleston Icons." Newspapers carried photos of the art and stories about Dunn.

"I wonder about the issue of attention," C.F. said. "I don't know if it was too much attention, if it scared him."

C.F. said Leslie was out of town the week Dunn took off, and he had to break the news to her when she returned.

C.F. said he went to Huntington, calling his contacts there and searching the city to see if Dunn was around. He couldn't find him.

Police also have had no leads, he said.

"I feel like somebody might have a clever way to get the word out to other cities," C.F. said. "Because cities - bigger cities - is where he feels safe. I think that's probably where he is.

"It doesn't necessarily mean we want to go and get him. You couldn't anyway, unless he wanted to come back. But I do worry about him, especially as he gets older."

C.F. said Dunn's house on the East End was meant to be his as long as he needed or wanted it.

His friends had even tried to see about getting him some sort of ongoing financial assistance.

Leslie took him to the Social Security office, and not only did they have no work record for him, but they had no record of him at all, not even a Social Security number, C.F. said.

"I don't know what we were thinking about long-term," C.F. said. "We had thought about trying to get a social service agency to come in, but what we had found and what we instinctively knew was that all those agencies would have certain rules, and he just didn't do well with rules. He really did his own thing, and that's how it was."; 12:58 PM EST
Eric said...: That is a very interesting story. My wife is a police officer in Charleston and had befriended Mr. Dunn (what she always called him). He used to hang around in the little mall area of the McFarland St. parking garage, where the CPD Training Office used to be. Her boss then would have her go ask him to move along and she would go talk to him. She gave him a Bible and said they would leave left over food from a class or some training on or around the dumpster because he wouldn't take it directly. She said she was surprised that he took the Bible from her.; 9:39 PM EDT
Imagesmith said...: I got to know him when the Strand was open. He liked to be left alone but hung out there with Mose. They never really talked but there was an understanding that he was welcome there as long as there wasn't any customers around. He stunk tho the high heavens. And he hated have his picture taken.; 10:00 PM EDT
Anonymous said...: My uncle worked for the welfare office. He knew some details about Bill Dunn. If I remember correctly, Bill's family had set up a trust for him, or something similar. In the late 60's, it was an adequate amount to live on. Due to inflation, that amount was insignificant by the early 80's. I'll ask my uncle for more details the next time I see him.; 10:04 AM EDT
Rick Claymore said...: I forget when it was, 1975 or so, I saw Mr. Dunn (I then didn't know he had a name.) watching a Charleston Charlies night game while perched in a tree beyond the outfield wall, alongside the train tracks, at Watt Powell Park. He was dressed in his characteristic long coat and fedora.
Another time, I tried to get a photo of him on Quarrier St., drinking a pint of chocolate milk, but he pulled his hat down over his face when I raised my camera
No, he did not like to have his picture taken.; 12:21 AM EDT
Anonymous said...: he ran around clendenin allthe time in the 70's and 80,s there would be time i would see him without a shopping cart i grew up with him around ther; 1:37 PM EST
Unknown said...: My dad worked for many years downtown at the post office, they said he came in every month and got a check. Who knows what kind, SS they thought. Unless he was off in Florida or somewhere else. I wonder if they've checked for a forwarded address. Maybe someone in another town helped him.; 10:35 AM EST
Unknown said...: I wonder if anyone ever found out the story behind this guy. I left Charleston in 1986 and came back in 2001 but I remember him on the streets and my sister and I talked about him often. Everyone knew this man. He was an icon in his day.; 9:46 AM EST
Unknown said...: In the early 80s he would come in Bowincals Hot dogs in the parking garage near the south side bridge. My friends worked there and they would give him hot dogs and coffee. We called him Auq, short for Auqalung because we never knew his name. He was a very interesting man and he was very cautious and leery of people. I wish I had known his real name at the time. I hope all is well with you Mr. Bill Dunn.; 8:30 AM EDT
Unknown said...: I bought him a pair of boots and some socks one winter when he was camping on the benches in Davis Park when I worked at AT+T. He was tickled to death. Several days later I noticed he wasn't wearing them. When I asked him about them he said someone had taken them from him and he wouldn't accept another pair. I think they had beat him up when they took them.; 10:49 PM EDT
Unknown said...: Mr Dunn was a sweet man under all that he wore to protect himself. In 1982 I graduated from GWHS. Our graduation was held at the Municipal Auditorium. My parents had recently gotten divorced & it was a stressful situation. As everyone took photos with their families & friends I sat alone in front of the building while my family discussed who was going to dinner & where, my father had a new woman in his life & the situation was uncomfortable. Mr Dunn was there, standing off to the side with his cart piles full just watching. I head my head down & out of the corner of my eye I saw him approaching, he came to me quietly with a rose in his hand. Where he got that rose I'll never know but it was that quiet offering from him & the words he spoke that I've remembered since then. A few yrs later I was employed at one of the stores in the Town Center, I would see Mr Dunn every morning when I came in to open the store I managed. I became familiar with him & some of the other homeless men that came in to get warm. I returned his kindness with hot coffee & warm food. I've heard he has passed on, I can only hope that he passed in peace.; 12:25 AM EDT
Unknown said...: Great article about Bill he really was a legend here him and Lighting thank you for the article; 9:23 AM EDT

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Saturday, December 01, 2007

Where is Bill Dunn?

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