It takes a village to raise a child and respect an elder

by Gail Hayden

Wilbur Hannan, who prefers to be called Bill, has lived in Ventura Village since the early ’50s. Like so many of our seniors who were born before that painful era we still refer to simply as The Depression, Wilbur (Bill) bears witness that it affects you for your whole life. It may also have shaped, in part, his current crisis which, without the help of Ventura Village leadership, might prove to be his undoing.

On Monday, October 27, the neighbors near 19th Street & Portland Avenue rallied quickly to intervene when Adult Protection, Animal Control, City Inspectors and the Minneapolis Police converged on Wilbur’s porch to board his home, separate him from his beloved dog, Sniff, and bar him from simply sleeping in his own bed ever again. The brightly- colored placards ominously read, “NOTICE: CONDEMNED, UNLAWFUL OCCUPANCY...” The look on Wilbur’s face read “TERROR.”

As Wilbur’s block club leader, I was aware that even though his property is zoned for eight units, he gave up being a landlord in the mid-’90s because his good tenants, one-by-one, left him out of fear of increasing crime throughout the neighborhood. Refusing to become a slum lord, he took it on the chin and lived there alone.

His home is a former mansion, complete with butler’s quarters that has begun to decline because Wilbur has been assaulted by astronomical leaps in property taxes higher than a man on a Minneapolis bus drivers’ pension and Social Security can afford. He proudly allowed the IRS to dock him $800 a month from his Social Security because of a tax oversight from years ago. He can no longer get up on his roof himself and basically has learned to live in small quarters on the first floor of his home, which he heats with a Franklin stove.

He might have changed his home back to a single unit dwelling, thereby affording himself the benefit of homesteading which would have been a financial advantage, but he wanted no pity and he believed the neighborhood would come back. In the meantime, he assuaged his loneliness by befriending some of the gentler, homeless folk he met as they went to and from Peace House, located around the corner on Franklin Avenue.

During our first cold snap, Wilbur, who had grown up an orphan in a foster home in Upper Peninsula Michigan, let a Native American grandmother, daughter and grandchild stay in one of his apartments, rent-free.

Life would have continued per usual but an interfamily dispute between the people he took in from the cold led to one family member stealing his power tools and calling the City out of spite when Wilbur barred him from visiting again. The next thing Wilbur knew, he was in the eye of the storm.

Word travels fast in Ventura Village. Big hearts respond. An army of members of Ventura Village descended to help. Mary Watson, Housing Committee Chair, added Wilbur’s crisis to the October agenda. Wilbur and his son, child eight of eleven, who is the very nice and very young fire chief of Dalbo, Minn., told of Wilbur’s plight. Savvy, longtime residents of Ventura Village wondered if the fact that Wilbur, who lives on choice property at 1908-1910 Portland Avenue (smack in the middle of the Franklin- Portland Gateway Project) might be in the way of gentrification. Wilbur said he wanted to be part of the gentrification.

He wanted to turn his home back to the kind of place it was when it was built in 1905. He charmed residents with his knowledge of the history of the home, retelling his story of finding a bottle of rum in his basement shortly after moving in. It was buried under some coal ashes. He poured it down the drain because he does not drink. Years later a retired Minneapolis Police officer walked by while he was sitting on his porch and told him that in the days of Prohibition the notorious gangster Kid Cann once operated a still in his basement.

I submit that I have a soft spot for people like Wilbur. When he speaks, I am carried away on a wave of old memories. My father, John Rajala, grew up just 7 miles from Wilbur in the Upper Peninsula. The dialect is distinctive. I am affronted, as is Wilbur, when the City goes on and on about condemning him for clutter. A lot of his “clutter” is old periodicals which he calls his library. I know this to be a characteristic of individuals who grew up dirt poor. I watched my father and mother struggle with keeping yarn, wrapping paper and every article of clothing they ever owned.

At this writing, Sniff the dog is “in jail.” History repeats itself. Sniff No. 1 died when a stray bullet in a drug raid in the building next door took him out. Sniff No. 2 bit three intruding gang members who tried to overrun Wilbur the way they did other residents. The City impounded Sniff 2, charged Wilbur $3200 in fines and charges, which he paid, and then destroyed Sniff 2 anyway. Sniff No. 3 has been deemed a biter because, while guarding Wilbur’s truck as Wilbur carried groceries into the house, he bit someone trying to get into the truck. Sniff No. 3 was taken by Animal Control and Wilbur went to see her every day until she was allowed to return home.

Today a neighborhood elder is under siege. It will take a Village to save his home. If it stays condemned, he loses everything. If it stays condemned, the bright rising star of Ventura Village, which seeks to capture its turn of the century charm, will flicker and dim.

Let’s look out for our neighborhood’s Wilburs. Let’s look out for every neighborhood’s Wilburs.

If you are inclined to help Wilbur, please contact Ventura Village at 612-871-7973.