Indianapolis homeless maintain holiday spirit

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -- On a bitterly cold December morning, a scene of Christmas unfolds beneath a bridge of rumbling railroad tracks and graffiti-covered walls near Downtown Indianapolis.

A man with one leg, a scruffy white beard and a red Santa hat emerges in a wheelchair, yelling "Hoo-rah." It's his way of saying "Ho-ho-ho." Behind him stands a 10-foot-tall Christmas tree with about 50 gold bulbs, each one with the name of an individual written in red pen.

They are all homeless, living under a bridge this Christmas.

"A lot of people thought -- they didn't know what to think of a homeless Christmas," said Maurice Young, 44, the unofficial leader of the homeless camp near East Maryland and South Davidson streets, one of the city's largest.

"Once the Christmas tree went up," he told The Indianapolis Star, "we got believers."

The tree and other small decorations offer a sense of normalcy during a holiday that many homeless people spend without close relatives. This camp of 15-plus tents is full of such stories.

On a recent morning, Frederick Crawford rips pages from a phonebook and tosses them onto a grill. It serves as a stove to heat pots of hot water for coffee, typically given each day from 8 to 10 a.m. Crawford, preparing this morning's serving, warns others to stand back before carefully igniting the papers with a lighter. His calm demeanor suggests he's done this before.

Crawford, 48, has bounced around during the last two decades between New York City, Chicago and Indianapolis, battling a cocaine addiction.

He now finds himself in the homeless camp, away from his three sisters this holiday, waking up in a tent. As he stands over the grill in a heavy coat, zip-up hoodie and black gloves -- a common look among camp members -- he glances at the Christmas tree a few feet away. The last "real Christmas" he had was in 1978, he says, when his parents, Frederick and Muriel, were both alive.

The younger Frederick Crawford, 13 and living in Harlem at the time, received an AFX racing set that Christmas, fit with small trucks and connectable tracks. He and his dad set them up in his bedroom that morning.

The following year, just 10 days before Christmas, his father died from heart disease. His mom died five years later after suffering respiratory arrest.

Now at the homeless camp and away from his family, Frederick Crawford knows this Christmas will be much different than that of 34 years ago. But the camp's Christmas tree, he said, helps offer "half a sliver" of normalcy.

"That lets me know that some people do care about us," he said. "So that has some meaning."

The tree, a Norway Spruce, was erected in early December and came from a Hancock County town called Wilkinson. The town is 40 miles from the camp. Tom Ordway, 53, whose church offers the camp hot meals, found the tree through his job at Duke Energy.

Ordway hauled the tree in his pickup truck to the camp after it was removed to make way for a power line.

"It seemed like a good fit," Ordway said. "It's not your standard, nicely-shaped tree from a Christmas farm. But it was fitting of the situation."

The tree's value is even recognized by nearby businesses, which consider the camp a blight to customers.

"Really bad for business for clients to see that," said Kristin Quinton, front desk manager at No. 7 Salon and Spa, who says the store has a "love-hate relationship" with the camp. "But at the same time, if you have nowhere else to go, you can't really blame them for going underneath the bridge.

"So if they need that sense of unity by putting up a Christmas tree and doing all that, I guess it doesn't hurt us anymore."

Other holiday decorations cover the camp, including about 25 red and white stockings that hang from a rusty beam below the railroad bridge. Donated cans of Campbell's New England Clam Chowder will be served on a table below those stockings Christmas Day.

Plans are also in store for camp members to exchange donated jackets, socks and other warm clothing through Secret Santa, the gift-giving game in which each person in a group is assigned, anonymously, to give someone else a present.

It's almost like any other Christmas. Almost.

"We know what Christmas looks like for us," said the camp's leader, Young, standing near a container of ornaments and a leftover box of cheese-and-sausage pizza slices. "The only difference is the four walls and a roof. We've got a bridge."

Venturing under the bridge quickly leads to what's arguably the camp's most festive symbol: Wes Cunningham, the man with one leg who sports a $2 Santa hat he bought from Dollar General.

"It's warm," he says, "and it makes a statement: Joy to the world."

Cunningham, 56, is the camp's self-proclaimed comedian, even cracking jokes at himself. Pretending he's Santa Claus, he proclaims Rudolph ran away the night prior, but that he couldn't catch the reindeer because he has only one leg.

Cunningham lost his left leg below the knee after a biking accident in which he said he swerved to avoid a