LEWISTON – His life was marked by trouble, adventure and long nights outdoors, and he will be missed.
People gathered Thursday to remember Walter Edwards, a homeless man, a brother, a friend and a fixture in Kennedy Park for the better part of a decade.
He died on Feb. 26.
Edwards, 47, had brain cancer.
More than two dozen people gathered at noon for a memorial service at Trinity Church at Spruce and Bates streets, in the church basement below is the Jubilee Center where Edwards often grabbed warm clothes and a free meal.
“He showed me the way of the big city, he showed me how to live this life,” said Misti Cates Omil, who moved to Lewiston four years ago. “I know it’s better off he’s gone, but yeah, it hurts.”
Angelo Giberti said he would forever picture Edwards wearing a pair of shorts over his pants, holding court on a picnic table, a 40-ounce beer in his hand.
“His honesty, I wish I could be that honest in my life,” Giberti said. “Walter was my buddy, that’s the best way I can sum it up.”
Edwards grew up in Lewiston. In a January interview, he said he had gone through periods of homelessness since age 11: “I’ve lived in more (rotten) places than I can think of.”
He was in jail off and on until 1997, his longest stretch being six years for shooting his child’s mother. When he wasn’t locked up, he slept in a trash bin behind the church, in a cemetery or at friends’ homes.
Last fall he started feeling sick and had several brain tumors removed. He said it was getting hard to think and to focus.
At the service, Edwards’ brother, Vincent, placed a single bouquet of red and yellow flowers in a vase next to a framed picture of Walter.
He asked a friend to read his eulogy for him.
“Walter, my brother, you are my favorite person. I will hold your hand through anything,” Vincent Edwards wrote.
Some in attendance were clearly homeless or on the edge, some not. People cried and hugged each other for comfort as they read poetry and sang.
It’s been a rough few weeks for people at the center, program coordinator Calvin Dube said. Shortly after Edwards died, two others, one of them also homeless, passed away.
Dube had known the thin, bearded Edwards for 10 years.
“I used to hide his beer sometimes so no one could steal it,” he said. “It’s a very close-knit community. We will talk and talk about Walter.”
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