Magda Konieczna

Chasing shadow of man we never knew

appeared in The Mercury April 11, 2006

About a month ago, I had one of those truly unique experiences that sometimes befalls reporters -- the chance to look into the life of someone very different from anyone I ever would have met.

What I saw really surprised me.

It was a Monday morning, and I was looking into a death that occurred the day before at the downtown drop-in centre.

It seemed like something fairly routine, something we probably wouldn't normally write about. But there was also the potential of a really compelling tale, the kind of story we too often overlook.

It's easy to write stories about people who have offices and phone numbers and who put out press releases. But this had the makings of something different.

What kind of life did this man lead, in quiet obscurity, never coming across the radar until he wasn't around any longer?

The more I dug into it, the more captivating it became.

Lonnie Stahlbaum showed me what it's like to be invisible.

He grew up in a small house near the Eramosa River. He'd spent his 43 years in Guelph, many of the most recent ones pounding the downtown streets, frequenting the drop-in centre and places like the Diplomat.

Although just about everyone I talked to outside of the drop-in and at the Diplomat knew him, no one knew much about him.

I have a list of misspellings of his name that runs just about as long as the list of people I interviewed.

Many of the people I talked to didn't know Stahlbaum had grown up here. But one man told me they had been neighbours as children.

Not even he knew about the large clan of Stahlbaums still living in this city, many of whom are related to Lonnie.

The same phrase came up in every conversation.

"He kept to himself," I heard time after time.

Even the few family members who agreed to talk to me didn't know him well. One cousin told me he'd seen Stahlbaum once in the last 20 years, by coincidence ending up beside him in a lineup at a local McDonald's.

"We're a very close family, but not close enough," he said, adding the last time the clan had gathered, it was for a funeral.

It was shaping up into a picture of a man who knew everyone but was known by no one.

And then the story took another sharp turn.

Local housing advocate Ed Pickersgill said Stahlbaum had been living in a tent. All winter long.

It seems he'd fought an eviction order last summer. Pickersgill said Stahlbaum won the fight but was evicted anyway.

That, he said, was the beginning of a kind of unravelling. Although people around Stahlbaum offered to help him find housing, he refused, Pickersgill said.

"Lonnie was a mountain man," said someone else who knew him.

Then, I got what all reporters hope so earnestly for -- a tip. The last address he'd lived at, on Stevenson Street.

Without much else to go on, I headed out to Stevenson Street, with an eye for a spot that could have offered some privacy to someone living in a tent.

I looked in a small forest where the extension of Stevenson meets the river. No luck.

I headed up that road, looking for treed bits where a tent could have been hidden.

I later found out that, not for the first time in this story, I was showing my ignorance through where I looked.

Stahlbaum's tent wasn't by the river. It wasn't in tranquil woods.

It seems he spent the winter in a tent on a busy section of Stevenson, near the train tracks.

He wasn't a rugged man living in rugged surroundings. He was a down-and-out kind of guy, surrounded by acquaintances, but no friends.

He slipped through the cracks of the system and hit the bottom.

And he'd left no trail as far as I could tell. He'd lived out his 43 years, and when the time came, he disappeared with hardly so much as a puff of smoke.

In the course of my digging, I came across several members of Stahlbaum's family who were angry I was working on a story. He wouldn't have wanted a story, they said. And why all the interest now, when he was dead? Where were we when he was still alive?

Those are valid criticisms. It's easy to let press releases dictate what you write about. Those stories package neatly, ready for the next day's paper.

I didn't learn enough about Lonnie Stahlbaum to write about his life.

But I did learn a lot I didn't know before, about the people who live in my community and about the assumptions I make about the place I live, by looking into his story.

I'm only sorry that came from chasing the shadow of Lonnie Stahlbaum rather than by talking to him face to face.