‘This could be any of us’: A former journalist ended up homeless. Then, his story inspired a Narragansett family to help. - The Boston Globe (2024)

The article caught the attention of Marissa Mathews, a Connecticut resident who immediately sent it to her sister Michelle and their parents, Janice and Bill Mathews, who live in Narragansett. They agreed to “find this guy and put him up for the holiday season,” Janice Mathews told the Globe.

“Here’s a guy who doesn’t rob banks, he doesn’t do anything wrong. He just needs society’s help, and no one is helping him,” said Janice Mathews, vice president of Cranston-based The Jan Companies, which owns country clubs and restaurants, including Newport Creamery. “My kids love Rhode Island, and they said, ‘Oh, my God, Mom, this could be any of us.’”

Fealey, 56, was born in New York City and grew up in Jamestown and North Kingstown. He graduated from the University of Rhode Island in 1990 with a journalism degree. He wrote about Luciano Pavarotti in the Narragansett Times and garnered praise in a letter from the opera star himself.

In 1996, he worked as a Boston Globe correspondent who wrote about Rhode Island, capturing stories about tourists paying to enter a shark cage off Point Judith, or the mystery surrounding the “Block Ness” creature discovered on Block Island.

But at age 29, Fealey was stricken with what he describes as “a violent and disabling onset of manic depression.”

For the next 26 years, he got by on a mix of eight medications, traveling the country while banging out literary fiction on a 1939 Smith Corona Clipper typewriter. He was supported financially by a businessman and patron of the arts who promised to find him an agent. Eventually, the typewriter fell apart, and so did the financial arrangement.

On Oct. 16, 2023, Fealey vacated an apartment in Westerly, and he started living in his car along with Lily, a rescue dog he adopted in Rhode Island four years ago that had once been starving and mangy, tied to a fence in Texas.

Fealey said he went to a emergency shelter but was threatened by a resident there. He tried to get relief from agonizing tooth pain, but a dentist assumed he was seeking drugs. He tried to get cash for food and gas but was referred to years-long housing waiting lists.

Police often told him he could not stay where he was, he told the Globe in an interview, and he said one patrol officer told him, “You had a good run in Westerly, but I think you’re done in this town.”

“It was like a line out of a stupid Western,” Fealey said. But he left.

He stayed in his car, sticking close to the Rhode Island coast, where he said he feels at home. And he looked for salvation in doing what he does best ― writing.

When the article appeared in Esquire, the Mathews family sprang into action.

Bill Mathews, retired after a career at the American Power Conversion Corp., began scouring Rhode Island’s beaches. The police in Westerly told him they had not seen Fealey since January. South Kingstown police told him they’d seen Fealey a few days earlier.

A key clue came from the Esquire article, which noted Fealey’s girlfriend, Lane McDonald, had worked at a “four-star boutique hotel by the beach in Narragansett.” Mathews figured that must be The Break Hotel, and he happened to be good friends with the owner, who gave him McDonald’s phone number.

McDonald called him back on Nov. 17, and Mathews asked if she knew where Fealey was. She said he was sitting right next to her in her car.

Mathews told Fealey his story had inspired his family.

“I’ve been looking for you for days,” he said. “Would you let me help you?”

Fealey’s story is part of a larger picture: The number of homeless people in Rhode Island has risen by 35 percent since last year ― to 2,442 people ― according to a point-in-time count by the Rhode Island Coalition to End Homelessness.

A 2023 report found that Rhode Island ranked last in the nation for annual housing production per capita, that one-third of residents were struggling to afford housing, and that the state had the nation’s second-highest growth rate among unsheltered people.

Fealey told the Globe that he’s noticed that blue-collar families, fishermen, and surfers are being driven out by rising housing costs while available housing is gobbled up by tourists in short-term rentals and University of Rhode Island students in off-campus housing.

His girlfriend, McDonald, 49, is a third-generation Narragansett resident who has been working since she was 21. She said she cannot afford to rent an apartment or buy a house in the coastal summer retreat that is her hometown, she said. She lives with her parents, helping to care for them.

Fealey told the Globe that the US Supreme Court was wrong when, in June, it cleared the way for cities to enforce bans on homeless people sleeping outside in public places.

“They are just outlawing human beings. Eventually, it’s like, well, I am somebody, and you’re denying me my ‘I am,’ ” he said, citing French philosopher René Descartes: “I think, therefore I am.”

In his experience with homelessness, Fealey has found that most people treated him with fear or disdain. He said rich people feel responsible and regular people fear they could be next.

“Is this where we are?” Fealey asked. “We’d rather the poorest among us die than see them and help them?”

There were also, he said, rare acts of grace. Once, a woman gave him the remaining half of her meatball sub. He said others have given him a pizza and a gift basket with apples.

But nothing compares to the compassion of the Mathews family. The family is paying for Fealey to stay at a local inn through the holidays as he searches for an apartment. And they’ve set up a GoFundMe page, which had raised $53,294 for him as of Wednesday night.

“That Mathews saved me,” Fealey said. “It’s unbelievable and unexpected. I’m fortunate and grateful.”

On Tuesday, Fealey and McDonald took Lily for a walk on Narragansett Town Beach, even though it was dark and drizzling.

Fealey said he hopes to rent an apartment, and to publish the novels he has been writing. He has no plan to leave Rhode Island’s coast.

“I feel like I’m under my sky here,” he said.

Edward Fitzpatrick can be reached at edward.fitzpatrick@globe.com. Follow him @FitzProv.