In 1960, at the age of 23, he hopped on a freight train to Fort Worth and began his life as a homeless drifter, hovering between Fort Worth and Los Angeles. Once while away from town after a skirmish with some local gangsters, he attempted a failed robbery on a bus and was arrested and sent back to Louisiana to serve a 20-year prison term. He was released in 1976 and returned to Fort Worth, where he lived on streets around a church mission center that cared for the homeless.
Ron Hall was a white boy born and grew up in a lower-middle-class town of Fort Worth, went to college, met his sweet heart future wife Debbie there, got into sales and investment banking jobs in his early career, before finding his knack of spotting and selling fine arts and became a successful international arts dealer, with a gallery set up in an upscale Fort Worth district just some freeway interchange and a tunnel away from the said church mission center.
In their early 50's, Ron and Debbie started volunteering at the mission center after Debbie had an epiphany of seeing "a poor man who was wise, and by his wisdom he saved the city" (Ecclesiastes 9:15) in her dream. Just a couple weeks after they started their volunteering work there serving food for the homeless, a melee broke out with a huge, angry black man hurling chair across the dining hall floor and shouting and threatening to "kill whoever steal my shoes." As Ron scanned the room for mission personnel to mollify the situation, Debbie leaned in and whispered to him, "that's him... the person in my dream," and urged Ron to befriend him.
Thus began a courtship then an endearing and enduring friendship between Ron and Denver, riding through and after Debbie's struggle and final succumbence to liver cancer at age 55 in 2000.
That's the true story told by the best-seller book "Same Kind of Different as Me," co-authored by Denver Moore and Ron Hall. (http://www.
You will probably be touched by a few things it describes coming from the sad plights of the homeless people. For example, right after they started serving there, Ron and Debbie noticed people always jockeyed for position near the head of their designated section of the serving line, for fear that the good stuff--meat, for example--might be ladled out already if they were too far behind in the line, and be left with soup or the stale 7-Eleven sandwiches. "When that happened, the looks on their faces told a sad story: As society's throwaways, they just accepted the fact that they survived on leftovers and discards."
One truth confessed by Ron himself was he was not a happy jolly donor of charity work by his own volition initially, but mainly doing it out of love and dedication to his dear wife Debbie. But it didn't take long for Ron to start getting a sense of fulfillment from his work of service. For example, after asking the chef to prepare a little more food so that the street people at the end of line could eat as well as those who slept at the mission, "it thrilled us to serve the street people the good stuff, like fried chicken, roast beef, and spaghetti and meatball... That was the first time I tried to do something to improve the lives of the people Debbie had dragged me along to serve. I hadn't yet touched any of them, but already they were touching me."
Another truth that can be gleaned from the book is the "haves" don't necessarily possess things better than the "have-nots." As a street person, Denver lived in a world with its own code of conduct and spirit of camaraderie (he took it upon himself for years to protect and take care of an old white homeless cripple who lived in his own filth and kept cursing and calling him "nigger") that he felt fairly comfortable with, as well as his simple faith in God, more so than Ron's occasional discontent or grumble with Him (for taking away his beloved wife Debbie, for example) showed.
The biggest truth revealed, however, was by the woman who brought these two diametrically different men together. More than being just another "holiday charity giver," Debbie was a genuinely loving and courageous woman who wanted to know and truly serve these "God's people" on consistent and permanent basis, believing each has gifts--like love, faith, and wisdom--that lay hidden like pearls waiting only to be discovered, polished, and set. As Denver explained how his heart changed from "don't-mess-with-me" to accepting and building true relationships with Ron and Debbie: "Faith-based organizations, government programs, and well-meaning individuals fed me and kept me alive for all those years on the streets, but it was the love of Miss Debbie that caused me to want to make a change in my life."
A good book worth reading.
"I used to spend a lot of time worrying that I was different from other people, even from other homeless folks. Then, after I met Miss Debbie and Mr. Ron, I worried that I was so different from them that we weren't ever going to have no kind of future. But I found out everybody's different--the same kind of different as me. We're all just regular folks walking down the road God done set in front of us... The truth about it is, whether we are rich or poor or something in between, this earth ain't no final resting place. So in a way, we are all homeless--just working our way toward home." -- Denver Moore
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