By Mark David Blum, Esq.

A few days ago, I caught a brief comment in the local newspaper about a man found dead in a doorway on Christmas Eve. Police released few details. Today, we learn he had a name, a family, a history, and gave his life for his country. We also learn that he died alone, homeless, and ignored by all of us.

The irony of his passing should not escape us. It was after all, Christmas Eve; the Christian season of giving and charity. Yet, in one quiet and frozen urine infested doorway in the middle of a cold winter’s night, died a man who felt not a bit of alleged Christian culture that supposedly dominates our nation.

I never met George Ruggaber and know nothing of him beyond the burp in the newspaper. According to his quote unquote ‘family’, George “was known as “George the German” because of his thick European accent.” Leaving Germany for Canada when he was 15, George came to Syracuse four years later where, “he worked as a mason, became active in his church, got married and had two children … [and] in the 1960s, Ruggaber enlisted and went to fight in the Vietnam war.”

God bless George Ruggaber. He symbolizes everything that America signifies and at the same time signifies everything about which we should be ashamed. The American Dream was clearly his aim and he did all that any citizen could hope for. George had a family, a church, and fellow service members. His family is in Cicero. For all of that, however, George died alone and cold in a dark and ugly Syracuse doorway on Christmas Eve.

Why is a VietNam veteran suffering from a service related injury going uncared for by the nation for whom he gave his health? Why was George alone on Christmas Eve laying dying in a Syracuse doorway while his family was warm and fed in Cicero? Where was his church, his union, his fellow citizen and neighbor? I never knew of George, but my heart breaks for him this morning. What greater horror can befall a human being that to die alone in the cold in some stone empty dark doorway?

I wonder of George’s last moments; his last thoughts. Was he at peace? Did he see his life ‘pass before his eyes’ and if so, what was his judgment? How can you judge the success or failure of your life when despite doing all society demands of you, one day you are alone, cold, and gasping for life on a street. I want to point a finger at so many and affix blame where I can. In the final analysis, however, blame for the manner of George’s death has to also fall upon me.

Like his family and Country; as a citizen of Onondaga County, I too failed in protecting George from loneliness and homelessness. In Cicero, they are more interested in sex offenders than the homeless. County government is no better or this man would have had a bed and a warm meal.

Maybe despite the best of environments, food, and family, George still would have died on Christmas Eve. Maybe despite our best efforts and those of everybody concerned, George wanted to live and die as he did. Maybe.

I can do nothing to ease George’s pain. His tortured soul is beyond my reach. But, come November 2007, every single Town and County elected position will be up for grabs. Every candidate had better have with him the spirit and memory of George Ruggaber. No government spending on anything until there are no more Georges in the Towns and County.

People die; that is life. The manner of their death, the dignity with which they lived their lives, and the mark they make upon society all intersect with each and every one of us. None of us is alone and not one of us should ever die alone, cold, in an abandoned doorway on a urine infested Syracuse street on the Eve of the celebration of Christmas.

Let that be George’s legacy; that there be no more like him.