A New Beginning, And A Room Of One’s Own

Today, Dudley has a home, stable health, and the energy to do the activities that let him feel like himself. Two years ago he was in hospice care, and was not expected to live.

Dudley first arrived in San Francisco from Los Angeles in 1992, and found himself in the Tenderloin without a support network or stable footing. “My family’s all scattered,” he says.

It wasn’t long before he found his way to St. Anthony Dining Room for a meal, and later enrolled in what was then the Employment Program. But he had been dealt some crushing blows. Dudley had long struggled with alcoholism; he took his first drink at the age of 5. When he was also diagnosed as HIV positive, he became a regular client at the St. Anthony Social Work Center.

Dudley’s health continued to decline, until he was one day hospitalized with HIV/AIDS-related pneumonia. “The hardest part was my willingness to take meds,” Dudley says. “I wanted to check out. I believe that my mental state was so bad it affected me physically.”

Discharged from the hospital, he found a room “right in the heartbeat of the T.L.,” and was there a year and a half before he got sick again. He was discharged to Maitri, a hospice for people living with AIDS. He expected to die. “But my health improved, and it was a shock to everybody,’ Dudley says. “That’s when everything turned around.”

Out of the hospital for the second time, Dudley was infused with a new commitment to thrive in life. With the help of Susan Shensa at St. Anthony’s Social Work Center, he found a secure and quiet room in San Francisco’s South Park neighborhood. “I used to go over there and sit in the park just to get away,” Dudley says about his current home. “I never thought I’d live there.”

In his new residence, Dudley found the strength to become sober and to begin taking his medicine regularly. The wise words of a friend gave him a new perspective. “My friend said to me, ‘You ought to be looking forward to taking pills. That’s what’s saving your life.’ It used to take me like two hours to prepare myself to take them.”

Dudley continues to be a regular client at St. Anthony’s Social Work Center, where he receives help to stay healthy and maintain stability. “Hope has really shined through,” Dudley says. “With everyone else’s support, I’ve gotten stronger, I’ve gotten healthier, I talk to people more. Before that, I would have been reclusive. Things would upset me and I would be like a wildcat. I take things with a lot more ease now, more restraint.”

Always someone with myriad creative interests, Dudley has been able to pursue painting and carpentry again. One of his hobbies is finding discarded treasures and restoring them. When he was moved into his room in South Park, he came across an oval medallion, decorated with a single diamond at the top. The medallion has an inscription that Dudley believes was a message meant for him: “It’s just the beginning,” it reads.