RSS FeedRemembering A Gentle Giant
** UPDATED INFORMATION: See This Post For Important Corrections & Updates **
As the year winds down, we wanted to take a moment to remember a friend of ours who passed away late in 2008. We discovered Christmas morning in the latest edition of Street Sense that our friend and former Street Sense vendor, Orin Andrus, had died on the very corner where he sold his papers.
We would see Orin selling papers most weekdays at the corner of 11th & G Streets NW. Orin was friendly and outgoing, so much so that we soon found ourselves looking forward to seeing him each morning. Often we were only exchanging pleasantries, but sometimes he’d tell us about his life in Key West. In fact most of what we talked about were the same things mentioned in Orin’s Street Sense vendor profile; his grandmother, his love of Mexican food (he seriously loved Mexican food), his hope to one day be back on his feet with a permanent job and home. If Orin ever missed a weekday at his usual corner, he’d later tell us of the odd job he had landed that kept him away (small carpentry jobs, helping to unload trucks, or some form of landscaping).
In the 12/24/08 edition of Street Sense mentioning Orin’s death, he is remembered as “a gentle giant.” How true those words seem; to us he was always as nice as he was tall. Orin always had a smile on his face and a “God bless you” for anyone who addressed him. During the summer Orin had taken to wearing a stingy brim fedora, and you know how we love those. That hat looked great on Orin, he certainly seemed pleased when we told him so.
When we stopped seeing Orin on the corner we assumed the best; that he finally achieved his dreams of getting back on his feet. It was a painful shock on Christmas morning to read that instead Orin had passed away.
We only knew Orin in the form of our daily, minutes long chats. Certainly those at Street Sense have a better idea of who he really was, and the deeper troubles he may have had in his life. We can only speak to the man we knew as a Street Sense vendor on 11th & G, our friend Orin.
(Ed. Note: Street Sense has Orin’s last name on a couple of different pages as both Andrus and Anrus. Our own research has led us to believe that Andrus is correct, but if any readers can confirm either name we will update the post.)
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Comments
thank you for this post..it reminds us that folks like Orin are every bit as much our neighbors…
RIP Orin…
xoxo
We remember Orin here at the Coffee Plantation in Key West as being just the nicest guy in the world…
May he finally find the peace he was searching for…
Wow. This is the saddest news I have heard all year. I am crying. Let us hope he is in a better place. Genuine guy, tough gig, heart of gold.
Would often talk with Orin in his corner selling papers in Key West. If he were not talking about his grandmother, he was talking about the 60 to 70 hour week he would put in hawking papers on the street. Rumor has spread that he was terminated from the newspaper company he worked for and that’s why he fled to DC. I personally don’t know if that’s true, but if it is, that’s pretty screwed up considering the amount of hard work he put in for the company, which he himself expressed to me the hardship he had endured in the hot boiling sun. I liked the guy and am saddened by the news of his death.
Ivory Wilson is the vendor I buy my paper from. I never spoke with Orin but did see him every once in a while. may he fare well on the other side.
I am hopeful that Mayor Fenty’s Housing First initiative will have a real impact on taking a bite out of the homeless situation in DC. I think programs like Street Sense help improve the situation also.
I formerly worked with Orin Andrus in Key West as a newspaper hawker. I am shocked and saddened by his sudden demise. One would have to go far to find a sweeter, gentler, kinder soul. He shared what little he had…and was always industrious. To clarify, Orin decided to quit his tenure with The Key West Citizen…where he’d worked for five years. He wanted/needed to move back to his “home turf”. I’ll surely miss him.
It’s very nice to see all of the kind comments about Orin. I discovered today that a Key West publication noticed our story and published their own story about Orin; for anyone interested in more information about Orin’s life in Florida.
Dear Columbo, your story was spot on, as they say. As friends and co-workers here in Key West were wondering…just where did Orin go and how is he? His former employer claims that currently no record exists of his fate in D.C. Do you or anybody else know exactly what happened to him?
I tried calling the DC medical examiner’s office this afternoon. They don’t have any record of an Orin Andrus being brought in to them. I can only report what Street Sense said in their article. It’s possible that instead he collapsed (or had some other emergency) on 11th & G, but later died in VA. If that’s the case, I wouldn’t know which VA jurisdiction to call to find out more details. For those interested in additional information, it might be worth contacting Street Sense to see what they can tell you.
I can confirm that his last name was Andrus. We chatted about the issue when his picture and bio were featured, and he was disappointed that they had spelled it wrong (Anrus) in print. I am so, so saddened by this news! I hadn’t seen him in weeks, but I had hoped that he gone somewhere warmer for the winter. Does anyone know what happened? I wasn’t in town to purchase the 12/24/08 issue.
Thanks Valerie, appreciate the comment. The info in Street Sense on Orin was part of a larger article about remembering the deceased homeless from the last year (I’m going by memory). It wasn’t an article all about Orin, he was a small mention. All it said was (again, paraphrasing) that he had died at the corner of 11th & G late in the year (or late summer? I can’t recall). The article did note that no further details on his death were available.
I’m sorry, I wish I had more information about Orin for you all.
Dear Columbo…thanks for your invaluable time on this subject. Your comments are puzzling though, in that my original belief was that Orin Andrus died “before Christmas”. Try as I might, I’ve not been able to obtain any official information…and no response at all from Street Sense. While “late summer” would qualify as being “before Christmas”…I have contacted several Virginia
entities with negative results. Surely, somebody knows something? It is unnerving that nobody seems to know anything
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I remember that vendor. I never talked with him, but when I used to walk to work down 11th Street he would say hello every day. Very sad.