You could pass a man every day on the street and never get to know him.
Tom Hendrick was such a guy.
For more than a decade, he was the beggar of downtown Akron.
That’s right. There was only one at the time.
Today, panhandlers hold cardboard signs for money at busy intersections throughout Summit County. They claim to be homeless and jobless. “Need work.” “Anything will help.” “God bless.” There are so many panhandlers in Akron that they are required to apply for a special permit and display it on their outer clothing.
From the late 1950s to the early 1970s, however, Hendrick was the sole panhandler on South Main Street. He never held a sign or pleaded for money. The bearded man sat on the sidewalk and placed his battered hat where passers-by could deposit spare change if they felt so inclined.
Hendrick was an amputee who lost his left leg in a car crash. No matter the weather — sun, rain or snow — he lowered himself onto the Akron sidewalk, tucked his right leg beneath him and sat on wooden crutches.
For five or six hours a day, he watched pedestrians pass on Main Street. Some ignored him, some greeted him by name and some dropped money in his hat.
“There are many wonderful people in the world,” he once told the Beacon Journal.
Like a patchwork quilt, stories about Hendrick’s life were pieced together downtown. According to scuttlebutt on the street, Hendrick was born in December 1913 in Kentucky, served in the U.S. Army, worked at an auto plant in Pontiac, Mich., and suffered his debilitating injury in a 1949 car crash in Toledo.
Why he drifted to Akron was unknown. He lived in an apartment at 798½ Bell St. and made daily trips from his home to downtown until getting mugged one time too many. After the fourth such robbery, he began accepting rides to and from downtown.
In December 1968, Beacon Journal reporter Robert Batz decided not to pass the beggar on the sidewalk. Instead, he stopped to interview him.
“I’d rather be working all day at a job than sitting here in the cold,” Hendrick told the reporter.
The Beacon Journal petitioned the Veterans Administration for the Army veteran, helping him gain $319 in back benefits and a monthly pension of $113.
Hendrick said he continued to panhandle downtown “to pick up a little extra money” because it was “pretty hard to support me and my wife” on the pension. Wait a minute. He was married? Most passing pedestrians didn’t know.
He had been accepting handouts downtown for more than 10 years. When he first started, there was a blind girl in a wheelchair who also welcomed donations, but she eventually gave up. Hendrick had South Main Street to himself.
He tried selling pencils for a while, but getting a vendor’s license was a headache, so he abandoned the business and resumed panhandling.
“Akron people are generous,” Hendrick told the newspaper.
“Women are more generous than men,” he said. “Women sometimes give me as much as $10. Why, just a little while ago, a woman dropped a $5 bill in the hat. Little children are generous with their pennies, too.”
He averaged about $25 on a good day. His best month ever was December 1967 when Christmas shoppers gave him more than $700.
“I don’t ask for money,” Hendrick pointed out. “I just sit here quietly and accept what I get. I don’t have any gimmick or anything.”
When people put money in the old hat, he looked up, smiled and said “Thank you.”
From his position on the sidewalk, the scruffy beggar was eye level with children. He didn’t mind when kids stared at him or asked about his leg. Truthfully, he wished more people would stop to talk — even if they didn’t put anything in his hat.
“I like it because it helps pass the time,” he said.
After the Salvation Army began collecting money in front of O’Neil’s department store, Hendrick gave up his longtime spot on South Main Street and relocated a block north.
“The Salvation Army does good things for people so I moved,” he explained.
Although he had been mugged four times on the way home, no one ever tried to steal money from his hat on the sidewalk, he said. If anyone ever did, “I guess I’d let them have it because I’d figure they needed it more than I do,” he said.
After suburban malls opened, fewer shoppers came downtown. Fewer shoppers meant fewer potential donors. One day in the early 1970s, Hendrick took his last hatful of coins and stopped panhandling on South Main Street.
In declining health, he was 65 when he died in 1978 at the VA Medical Center in Brecksville.
When Tom Hendrick vanished from downtown Akron, the city lost another memorable character.
Did pedestrians notice he was missing? Or did they just keep walking?
You could pass a man every day on the street and never get to know him.
Copy editor Mark J. Price is author of The Rest Is History: True Tales From Akron’s Vibrant Past, a book from the University of Akron Press. He can be reached at 330-996-3850 or mjprice@thebeaconjournal.com.