Free Press’s Seidel meets Joe Murphy

This one is hard to read, but necessary: the Free Press’s Jeff Seidel traveled to Kenora, Ontario to meet former Red Wing Joe Murphy, who is homeless and struggling:

Murphy is good at being homeless, just as he was good at playing hockey. It took a certain amount of practice, but he has mastered it. He has learned how to bounce between different shelters and churches, always finding a way to get a meal and clean set of clothes.

He has learned to be industrious, ripping apart a plastic lid at McDonald’s, forming it into a sharp triangle and turning it into a toothpick. He has learned how ATM machines give off heat in the winter, and how to burrow inside industrial-sized garbage containers.

“Those things are like condos,” he says, with a certain amount of yearning. “I’m not kidding you. But you have to deck it out. You just flatten cardboard boxes on the floor. Put stuff on the walls. Throw down some blankets. Lay down. Put on some candles. Get your stuff going. I was, ‘Moving on up, to the east side.’ I was George Jefferson in this. Man, I had everything. You remember that one? It was everything to me. I’m living the high life and I was. The only thing missing was that white butler. It was unbelievable. I had a great time.”

Murphy prefers living on his own.

He doesn’t like to deal with large groups in the shelters.

“You are right side by side,” he says. “Now, they are snoring and all kinds of stuff going on and some guys sleep walking and I get uncomfortable.”

Continued

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George Malik

My name is George Malik, and I'm the Malik Report's editor/blogger/poster. I have been blogging about the Red Wings since 2006, when MLive hired me to work their SlapShots blog, and I joined Kukla's Korner in 2011 as The Malik Report. I'm starting The Malik Report as a stand-alone site, hoping that having my readers fund the website is indeed the way to go to build a better community and create better content.

One thought on “Free Press’s Seidel meets Joe Murphy”

  1. I pray he accepts help and can be assessed and diagnosed. I don’t pretend to know what is causing his pain, both physical and mental, but I do believe CTE plays a large part in it. This story was really hard to read but I hope it raises questions about the long term effects of concussions and also other trauma such as PTS syndrome.

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