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Henry Campbell's story
published: Wednesday | January 7, 2004

HENRY CAMPBELL does not fit the typical description of a person one would expect to find in a government run infirmary.

As he tells it: he had a house in Florida, a fibre-glass business, a huge sailboat, a wife and a son who was the feather in his cap. But now, all he has is a bed at the infirmary and the patch of land behind the matron's office, where he grows vegetables.

The 2002 flood rains that hammered Portland, St. Mary and St. Thomas washed him out of a little board structure he had built on leased land. He lost tools, clothes and "a few other things".

He moved to another house where he had to pay $5,500 for rent, but that was not sustainable, as he didn't have commensurate income, and after four months, the landlord turned him out.

The 74-year-old man took to sleeping under a bus shed, but couldn't defend himself from the harassment of other street people, including drug addicts, so he went to the infirmary.

LOST IT ALL

By many people's standards, he could have been considered a wealthy man ­ home in the US, cars, a boat and a boat-making business ­ but he lost it all. He asked me not to go into too many details about his life, and it's just as well, you might find it too hard to believe, or end up being angry. But if you had only one child, who was your pride and joy, you might empathise.

Suffice it to say, Mr. Campbell had a son, who was sailing on the road of success (including graduating with honours from an Ivy League university in the US) when he took a wrong turn. The son, a daredevil, made some choices in life which not only cost the son dearly, but left the father holding the bag. He hasn't seen or heard from his son since.

"I had to sell my house, my boat was destroyed; in the end I only had a few dollars and the clothes on my back to return to Jamaica."

That's how Mr. Campbell ended up in the house that got washed away by the flood. Since then he has been living on th edge.

Mr. Campbell, unlike many others in the infirmary, does not sit around waiting for the end of his life to come, instead he insists he is going to make it out of the infirmary and get his life back together.

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