NYC Homeless Man Shoeless Again Despite Boots, page 2

Originally posted by FlyersFan
He's a veteran and he has family he can stay with. His family said they invite him often to come live with them and that they love him but the homeless man WANTS to be homeless.

Bull feathers. Did you bother to read further than your Yahoo sourced article? No? Well I did and in this one his brother states that until this happened they had no idea his brother was homeless:

The family of Jeffrey Hillman, the shoeless man helped out by a police officer in Times Square, had no clue their relative was living on the streets.

The man's brother, Kirk Hillman, was shocked when he recently saw his younger brother make headlines around the world after the selfless officer gave the homeless man a new pair of boots.

'The last time we heard from him was maybe a year ago on New Year’s Day,' said Tish Hillman, who lives with Kirk in Allentown, Pa. 'Once a year, he calls us to let us know he’s OK.'

Daily Mail Article Linked in your Yahoo Source

Or, because it fits your preconceived ideas of whats going on here, do you choose instead to accept this version of it from one of Jeffrey's neices?

'Jeffrey has his own life, and he has chosen that life, but he knows that our hearts and home are always open to him,' said Alegra Hall, Kirk Hillman’s daughter, told the newspaper.

'He knows that,' she said. 'He’s well aware of that.'

(Source being the same article linked above, found at the very end of the story)

My question is why does the brother, Kirk Hillman, first claim above he had no idea his brother was homeless,then go on to insinuate that his brother Jeffrey in the past has refused the offer of living with them? As evident in the second linked article in the Yahoo source from the OP The NY Daily News that states:

“We love our brother very much,” Hillman’s brother, Kirk, of Nazareth, Pa., told the Daily News Sunday, adding that he was surprised to see his brother in the newspaper. “Our door is always open to him, but this is a lifestyle he’s chosen.”

I have to wonder just why this bit of the OP's Yahoo sourced article was left out of the OP, as it clearly indicates to me a man, Jeffrey (lets give him some dignity and call him by his name and not 'that homeless man'), that is indeed grateful for the gift:

"I appreciate what the officer did, don't get me wrong," Hillman continued. "I wish there were more people like him in the world."

He added: "I want to thank everyone that got onto this thing. I want to thank them from the bottom of my heart. It meant a lot to me. And to the officer, first and foremost."

Sometimes in our rush to assist... or in some cases judge..... we forget that life on the streets is vastly different than most of us can even imagine. Those shoes may very well be stashed somewhere because they are new, nice, now 'famous' and therefore coveted by others living on the streets and that could very well get Jeffrey killed. He may have sold them too, who knows...and we probably will never know unless there's another article that comes out later where Jeffrey took a reporter to the location of the stashed shoes. All I know, is that I choose to have some faith that Jeffrey's story is true until proven otherwise.

To automatically jump to a convenient harsh judgement of another human being simply because of his station in life at the moment seems crass, cold, haughty and greatly lacking in the compassion that we all seem to recognize is lacking in our world today and mourn the loss of but have a very hard time practicing.

edit on 3-12-2012 by MyMindIsMyOwn because: punctuation

ETA: In re-reading my original response I noticed that I was mistaken, The same brother, Kirk Hillman, in one article (Daily Mail) claims he had no idea his brother was homeless, then states in another article (NY Daily News) that Jeffrey has always known he was welcome in their home. I've corrected the mistake in my response.

edit on 3-12-2012 by MyMindIsMyOwn because: (no reason given)