Kevin Abbey This is Me

Education

 Web References

1. 1. For a Homeless Boy, Camp Is an Oasis (washingtonpost.com)

   www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ - [Cached]

   Published on: 7/23/2002   Last Visited: 7/23/2002

   Kevin's father, Kevin Abbey, is doing his best to grant his son's wish. "I'm trying to find me a job -- that's my first priority," he said. "I want my own place where I can come and go as I please. I want Kevin to have a room of his own." At D.C. Village, father and son share a small bedroom and use a communal bathroom down the hall.
   
   Kevin's trip to Moss Hollow will be his first time at a camp.
   
   "I'm really excited," he said between bites at the nearest McDonald's. "You can play football there, right?
   ...
   Kevin is a student at Bunker Hill Elementary School in Northeast Washington. He just finished fifth grade but will be repeating it in the fall. Over the past year, as he and his father moved from one place to another, he fell behind in his studies.
   
   "His teachers wanted to pass him, but I said no, make him do it again," his father said. "He needs to get it right."
   
   "I said I'd try again but do better this time," Kevin said.
   
   Before arriving at D.C. Village, Kevin and his dad lived in Oxon Hill -- first in a place of their own, then with Kevin's uncle and his wife. But Kevin's father argued with the wife, so they left.
   
   Over the years, Kevin's dad has worked as a construction laborer, for a private mail company, at a cleaning service and as a yard worker. He scours newspapers for a job and follows up on leads from an employment agency. But it is a struggle, and he is feeling the stress. His nails are bitten to the quick, and he sounds sad when he says: "I love my son to death.
   ...
   According to Kevin's father, Kevin has met his mother only three times -- the first when he was 10, in a random encounter at a supermarket. The mother left the family shortly after Kevin was born. The father has cared for him since.
   
   This isn't the first time father and son have lived in a homeless facility. When Kevin was an infant, they lived in another shelter in the District. There, Kevin caught a bad case of chicken pox from another child, and his father discovered how generous strangers can be in an emergency.
   
   "I went to a pharmacy and said, 'I need calamine lotion, Benadryl, alcohol swabs and an oatmeal soak for my baby with chicken pox. And I don't have any money, so if you don't help me, I'm just going to have to take what I need, and I'm sorry,' " Kevin's father remembers telling the pharmacist.
   
   The pharmacist "told me to get whatever I needed . . . and let me leave," Kevin's father recalled. When the boy got better, "I went back with some money" but the pharmacist refused it. "People can be very kind," he said.
   ...
   Kevin said he wants to be football player, a basketball player and a lawyer when he grows up, "so I can help people who need it and sue people who do wrong." He nods in earnest agreement when his father tells him, "You can be anything you want, but you need to stay in school."
   
   But Kevin is quick with smiles and laughter when the mood around him lightens. He knows how to have innocent fun in the midst of a morass of grown-up problems. And yesterday morning, he boarded a bus to Camp Moss Hollow.
   
   Our goal by July 26: $700,000.
   
   In hand as of July 19: $351,723.01.
   
   TO CONTRIBUTE TO THE CAMPAIGN: