Running with Raven

by Laura Lee Huttenbach

  He read “When the Eagle Flies with the Raven,” a poem inspired by the fraught relationship with his stepfather. “As much as I hated the Eagle,” says Raven, “I knew in my gut that if someone was trying to hurt my mom or invade the shores of Miami, that we would band together to defeat a common enemy.” It was a call to action for the crowd to set aside their personal differences and unite to save the park. When he finished, he announced, “Now I gotta run,” and dramatically leaped from the stage, feet moving as he hit the ground. Eventually, after another protest, Penrod chose a new site for his parking lot, and Raven discovered he liked the taste of activism. Now, the playground is the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Park, on Ocean Drive between 2nd and 3rd, across from Raven’s apartment.

  * * *

  TO THE NEW PLACE and the new girlfriend, Raven added a new job, working security for the Royale Group at a handful of art deco hotels. From an insider’s vantage point, Raven witnessed the turnaround of South Beach. He started out patrolling the alleyways but soon got promoted to the lobby at the Cardoza, where he carried bags up to guestrooms and gave directions.

  I met Raven’s old boss at the art deco hotels on a Raven Run in 2015. He goes by the name Hoover Maneuver. “How was Raven as an employee?” I asked.

  “Oh, he was excellent,” said Hoover Maneuver. “Man, people were always bitching about things. But Raven did what he needed to do. He never gave me shit. So I gave him a raise. If you didn’t give me shit, you were okay with me.”

  One of Raven’s duties at the hotel was to make the wake-up calls, and Bob Kuechenberg, linebacker for the Miami Dolphins during 1972’s Perfect Season, was one guest Raven woke up. A few mornings, Kuechenberg beat Raven to the wake-up call. “Raven, this is Kooch,” he said. “I’m up. Don’t worry about calling me.” One day, Kuechenberg strapped on hand weights and joined Raven for a couple miles but never completed the eight.

  Miami Beach was crawling with celebrities. Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones had opened up a live music venue called Woody’s. One night, Raven was at work in the lobby when a chauffeur dragged Wood in and dropped him in a chair. “He was high as a kite,” says Raven. “He was still friendly though, smiling and waving to everyone.” Wood’s head of long black hair rolled back, his pointy nose pointing straight up in the air. “How does he do shows like that?” asked Raven.

  “Oh, we just prop him up, and he does it,” said one guy in his entourage.

  Another guest at the Cavalier hotel was 25-year-old actor Matt Dillon, who asked Raven for advice on the local women. Mickey Rourke stayed at the Leslie and the Cardoza, too. One afternoon, Miami native Lauren Hutton walked up to Raven on the beach. “Hey, I always see you,” she said. “What’s your story? Why are you running all the time?” Raven said, “It’s just what I do.” She asked him to watch her stuff for a minute and then came back with a signed headshot.

  Through the city’s facelift, Raven kept his life the same with the run and the swim. The swim streak had its hardest test in September 1988, when Hurricane Gilbert was churning up the Atlantic. Springman had gone with him, and the two swam out past the breakers. “We were like pieces of paper in the wind,” says Raven. “The ocean was a whirlpool, and we were being held under longer. We started edging toward the shore, letting the waves crash over us like a mountain of water.”

  V

  BELONGING

  A guy I was in jail with told me, “You gotta find a group to be a part of or something to get involved in.” I was in a really dark place, and this run just sucks the negativity out of you. God only knows where I’d be without Raven and this run. It’s the best thing that ever happened to me.

  —Butcher, personal trainer with a record of 200 consecutive runs

  What impressed me most was the second time I showed up at Tower 5, Raven remembered my real name, nickname, where I was from now, where I originally came from, and my birthday. It was kind of freaky. I thought maybe he just got lucky with all my info for some reason, but over the years I have seen him do the same with others that show up.

  —Thunder, commuter from Los Angeles, 114 runs

  I always felt like an outcast . . . now this run is like my family.

  —Raven

  TEN

  GENTLE SOUL

  One night in 2012, Raven had four free tickets to a Marlins game and invited me to come with him and Miracle. Picking up the tickets at Will Call, Raven gave the stadium employee these instructions: “If someone is looking for a ticket, please give him our extra.” As we approached the gate, Raven snapped his fingers. “Damn it,” he said, “I should’ve given our extra ticket to the homeless man we passed coming out of the parking garage.”

  “But then we’d have to sit next to him,” I said.

  “I know,” he replied. “He could’ve sat next to me.”

  Raven has applied this philosophy throughout his life. He will sit next to, run with, swim with, share food with, or even live with, practically anyone. To most of society the characters are addicts, street refuse, or at least marginal people. But Raven celebrates them—drawing them in—to listen and seek wisdom. Often, he writes songs about them.

  “Whiskers on the Rocks” is a tune Raven wrote about a homeless man named Eugene who’d come to South Beach with his mother from Brooklyn in 1966. When his mother died in 1985, Eugene developed a fear of germs, which is an inconvenient phobia to have as a homeless person. He loved to read and dug through trashcans in search of his favorite magazines and newspapers. He said he went to high school with Colin Powell, and they used to talk global affairs in the cafeteria.

  On cardboard signs, Eugene wrote public service announcements in magic marker and tried to educate the South Beach public on issues like skin cancer, transfats, and bike paths. Most people didn’t read the signs (or couldn’t read his handwriting) and assumed he was begging. Once Raven asked, “What’s with the sign?” Eugene replied, “It’s not a sign. It’s a placard.” So Eugene became Placard Man.

  “He wouldn’t touch money or accept food,” recalled Raven. “One time when we were talking—in a matter of five minutes—two people tried to give him money. He told them, ‘No, I’m not homeless. I’m just roughing it,’ but they stuffed dollars in his pocket.”

  His clothes were rags. He had a gigantic beard. His toes poked through his sneakers, which looked like clown shoes, and he wore a dirty, floppy hat. He slept on the pier and sometimes got arrested for vagrancy. Once, he asked Raven to be a character witness. “I said of course,” recalled Raven. “Then Eugene goes, ‘Uh, would you mind trimming your beard a little? ’ I couldn’t believe it. I was like GQ compared to him.”

  Placard Man received his mail at Raven’s apartment. When he came to collect it, he didn’t like to touch the doorbell. Shuffling up, he tilted back his head and bellowed, “ROBERT,” and Raven ran to the door before his neighbors complained. Placard Man then tucked a dollar into the black glove hanging from Raven’s door. “You don’t have to do that,” said Raven. “You’re my friend.” Placard Man insisted. After a year, he started leaving two dollars. “What’s this?” asked Raven.

  “Inflation,” said Placard Man.

  Other homeless people considered Eugene a role model. He never drank or cursed. All the Raven Runners who knew Placard Man liked him a lot. They had a tradition. When they ran by, Raven shouted everybody’s real name—Placard Man didn’t like to use nicknames—and Placard Man repeated them. “He was familiar with most people, but if it was a different or a foreign name, it’d stump him,” says Raven. After all the names, Placard Man would announce the slogan he invented for Raven: “Robert, doing his bit to keep America fit.”

  On why he wrote “Whiskers on the Rocks,” Raven channels Johnny Cash. “I look at the outcasts and the loners and the people who are downtrodden, and I give them some light,” he said. “I want to tell stories about people that life passed by and should not be passed by. We were all babies at one point. Everybody was somebody and achieved something, whether it’s good
or bad. If it’s good, it can inspire others. If it’s bad, maybe a guy heading down that path will hear the story and say, ‘If I’m not careful, I’m going to end up like him.’ I love the theme of redemption. Anyway, the thing is, I don’t like people to be forgotten.”

  Raven believes that we are all one accident away from being homeless. When he sees someone in distress, he thinks, “That could’ve been me. Or that could be me tomorrow.” He’s written a gospel song, “Grace of God,” about it. If Raven were writing his own book, he would devote a chapter to everyone whose name he remembered. In our sessions, he named literally thousands of characters. Without one positive role model in his life, Raven looked for wisdom in dark corners and tried to extract a piece of goodness from everyone, assembling a composite of qualities to emulate.

  If there wasn’t goodness in someone, he told me what made the person different. Sometimes, I thought that it wasn’t what I saw in Raven that drew me to his story but what he made me see in others. At the first annual picnic that I attended in March, Raven introduced me to his neighbor, an 80-year-old man named Tony Gulliver who was once a successful photographer but now lived in Section Eight Housing. At the top of his long-limbed, six-foot frame sat a shock of white hair that spilled down his sideburns and wrapped around his face and lips. When he listened, his jaw moved back and forth like a typewriter. “Tony, this is White Lightning,” Raven said. “I think you two are going to like talking to each other.”

  I sat with Tony at that picnic table for over an hour, absorbing his stories and laughing hard. He told me, “My sister got all the brains in our family. I got the athleticism. So every time she said she was smarter than me, I’d hit her real hard.” With each blink, his eyes flickered between kindness, trickster, and apology. “I’m just teasing, she doesn’t lord it over me at all. She won’t mention she’s a lot smarter than me, and I reckon I won’t mention that she can’t catch a football.”

  Your participation in talking to Tony came through listening. If someone didn’t abide by the rules, he forfeited. “Here’s what I do,” he told me. “If I’m talking to someone that I don’t want to talk to, I just look at them real serious. I look right past them, not in the eye, but they think I’m trying to look them in the eye. Then I say, real slow, ‘Can you ask me that question again?’ ” Tony’s “again” lasted five syllables and he cocked one eye wide open. “Remember don’t look at them when you say it. I’ve never had to ask that more than three times, and the person just walks away and thinks I’m crazy.”

  At one point he was trying to explain how to get somewhere, and I said, “I’m sorry, Tony, I just have a terrible sense of direction.”

  “Never apologize for that,” he said. “It’s probably your best quality, because you’re always finding new places.” I loved that. I’ve quoted Tony a number of times since then, and every time I do, I feel a little like Raven.

  Raven’s girlfriends all approached his—um, unique—friends with varying degrees of acceptance. The Astrologer referred to new characters as Raven’s dolls. “Oh, you got a new doll?” she would say. “You’re putting another doll on the shelf?” (Jovial Joe, as far as I am aware, is the only person that is literally on his shelf.) The Astrologer was reluctant at first but eventually Raven found something in everyone she could relate to. That’s what Raven tries to do. He wants people to relate to each other and encourage empathy. While some characters may seem tangential, in Raven’s mind they are central, because the circle is so big. He thinks the more we ostracize weirdness, the less colorful the inside. He worries that people are becoming the same, almost robotic. He longs for the time when the village idiot was mocked but also celebrated.

  According to Raven, the funniest person he has ever met was a whistle blower at a train station from Essen, Germany, called Handshue. Handshue came running up to him at the lifeguard stand one day in the late eighties wearing one black glove. “I see you running, running, running—like a gorilla,” shouted Handshue, rubbing his chest hair. “I am the handschuh, like the Raven! I will run with you!” Handschuh meant glove—literally a shoe for a hand—in German. Handshue would run a mile or two—up to six—but never finished eight. If a tourist held up a cracker or a potato chip to feed the birds, Handshue jumped up and plucked it out of their hands with his teeth. Then, flapping his arms with a high-pitched caw, Handshue bellowed, “Huh! I am now a seagull!”

  Once, at 23rd Street on a rainy day, Handshue, carrying a wedding cake, tracked Raven down. “I have a wedding cake for Raven,” said Handshue. He had found it on the beach, covered in sand. Another time, Handshue showed up to run with a leash tied around his neck. “I am a dog,” he said to Raven. “You will run with me, your dog. Arf, arf.” Seeing Handshue’s delight, Raven couldn’t say no. For several miles, Raven ran down the beach with Handshue barking on a leash.

  Handshue knew the price of every hotel in South Beach, and the cheapest place he found was the Roselle Hotel, a few blocks off the ocean at 6th Street. Like many run-down places at the time, the Roselle was infested with rats, and their high-pitched squeaks were keeping Handshue up at night. One afternoon, he came to the beach hopping and prancing with a wooden rattrap clenched between his teeth. On the rattrap was a dead rat, swinging back and forth beneath his chin. “Handshue, what are you doing?” asked Raven.

  Handshue transferred the trap to his ungloved hand so he could speak. “I am celebrating the death of a rat!”

  Raven recalled: “So we’re running down the beach, and he’s got the trap in his mouth, and all the old people were going, Oh, my God. At the turn at the jetty, the Client [a lifeguard] pulls up in the Beach Patrol vehicle and goes, ‘Raven, you gotta tell him that you can’t do that.’ So I turn to Handshue and say, ‘Handshue, this is America. You can’t be running down the beach with the rat on the trap.’ ”

  Handshue again explained the rat had been impeding a peaceful slumber, but Raven didn’t budge. “No, no, no,” Raven told him. “Put it in the trashcan.”

  Raven thought Hitler had something to do with his insanity—Handshue was born in 1932—so Raven asked him about it. “Hitler, yes,” said Handshue, pointing to himself. “Youth Corps brainwash kids.” Handshue visited South Beach every summer and each year, he got a little drunker. On his last year, he fell in love with Margaret the Mermaid (who swam with Raven and a British lady called the Prune). In the middle of the night outside her place, Handshue was shouting at the top of his lungs, “Margaret! Mermaid! I love you! Hallelujah!”

  The cops stopped Raven the next day. “We arrested your friend, that German guy,” said the policeman. “He was walking down Ocean Drive screaming hallelujah all night.”

  When Raven finished telling this story, he looked me straight in the eye and said, “Every so often, Handshue was a little over the top.”

  * * *

  SO RAVEN DOESN’T ALWAYS DISCRIMINATE wisdom from weirdness. To Raven, something memorable is worth remembering. “But if I had to pick just one person I looked up to for life and working out,” Raven told me, sitting at his apartment, “it’d be the Man of Many Rings.” A former wrestler, the Man wore heavy silver rings on every finger—skulls, Indian heads, a cross, Jesus on a cross, or a Bible. Varicose veins crawled up both his legs, winding between scars from his service in World War II and Korea. The Man of Many Rings lived to work out, and he rode his bike all over town, from South Beach to Hialeah to get roasted chicken. “Being close to nature is like being close to God,” he said often. His self-made gym was in the park on 3rd Street. Standing behind a big concrete bench, he lifted it slowly, holding it in place with quivering biceps. When he wasn’t lifting the bench, he was sitting on it, quietly reading his Bible. Raven admired the Man of Many Rings’ strength, spirituality, and bond with the environment.

  When Raven started running, the Man of Many Rings nodded approvingly. “You’re doing great,” he said. “There’s nothing like running.” He couldn’t run on land himself because of war wounds, but he jogged in the ocea
n. “He was like my father figure,” said Raven. “A gentle soul, but someone you wouldn’t want to mess with.” I asked if the Man of Many Rings ever admonished him for drinking before the streak. Raven said no. “He wasn’t like that. He’d just tell me I reminded him of his oldest son. It wasn’t until later I found out his oldest son was in jail.”

  One day in 1987, Raven noticed a pamphlet sticking out from the pages of the Man’s Bible. “What are you reading?” Raven asked. Man of Many Rings first deflected the question but wound up confessing it was a motorcycle magazine. “You’re not thinking of buying a motorcycle, are you?” asked Raven. “You’re sixty-two. You could get killed.”

  The Man of Many Rings bought a Harley and on March 12, 1988, he drove into the back of a car on North Miami Avenue, dying on impact. He had no family and no savings for the burial, so Raven collected donations from lifeguards and Beach regulars. He needed $500. When he called the county mortuary to pick up his rings—maybe they were worth something—nobody had seen any. After three weeks of fundraising, Raven was $200 short. “This man fought for our country,” explained Raven, still disappointed. “He was a war hero at Iwo Jima, a Purple Heart recipient. I couldn’t fail him.” But the Man of Many Rings went in a pine box in a pauper’s grave somewhere in Dade County.

  The Herald published “The Raven and the Rings,” an article chronicling Raven’s unsuccessful plight to honor his friend. Raven is quoted: “He had a tough life and being buried in a pauper’s grave, a veteran of two wars, it’s not fair.” Closing the article is a poem by Raven in memory of the Man of Many Rings: