Life’s Curveballs

Some might say that Joseph Zeman was an outcast of society, but he had a richness many of us will never know. At 8 months old, Joseph suffered a stroke and from the time he was 14 months old until he was 48 years old he suffered from uncontrollable grand mal epileptic seizures.

Joseph was a man without much schooling and he worked at many odd jobs where he shined shoes, mixed paint, delivered telegrams, but lost all of these jobs due to his seizures. He was a quiet man that lived alone most of his life and died a lonely death. He was struck by a van in Chicago near Devon Avenue and McComick Road. Joseph had just turned 77 years old this past Sunday.

The only thing that he had on him at the time of his death was old newspaper clippings. The police found about a half-dozen laminated copies of the same story tucked into his bag. The clipping showed the man in full color, feathered with pigeons, which told a piece of his story.

Here’s just a bit of the pigeon man’s story, the one he carried (click on photo for larger view):

Except for his lips, you would think he was made out of stone, the man who sits, hours on end, on the red fire hydrant on Western Avenue, just north of Lawrence, pigeons by the dozens perched on him.

Pigeons on his head. Pigeons on his shoulders and right down his arms. Pigeons poised on each palm. Pigeons clinging to his chest. Pigeons on his lap. Pigeons on his thighs. Pigeons, of course, perched on each foot. The pigeons peck and coo, occasionally flutter their wings. Sometimes even scatter. But not the man, the man is motionless. You might mistake him for a statue.

Joseph Zeman, 73, commonly known as the Pigeon Man of Lincoln Square, can sit for hours, barely flinching a muscle. Except for those lips.

He coos right back to the birds. He kisses them, right on their iridescent necks, flat on the point of their sharp little beaks. He nuzzles them, rubs his nose in their wings, the herringbone of feathers all black and charcoal and pewter and white. He calls them by name, his favorites, Whitey and Brownie. “Sure, sure,” he coos, stroking them with his words. “There, there,” he clucks.

He worries when one is missing in action. “Where you been? Where you been?” he asks when the prodigal pigeon finally flutters back. Like some kind of pigeon dentist, he tenderly plucks a feather that’s stuck in a beak.

He loves them as though they’re his best friends in the world, and pretty much that’s what they are.

You can read the complete 2004 story on the Chicago Tribune website.

After Joseph was struck by the van and taken to St. Francis Hospital, the police called the reporter that wrote the story above. The reporter knew who he was and had even been to the little attic where he lived.

In describing where Joseph lived, the reporter told of seeing “boxes and boxes of St. Francis postcards…” The report said, “…he really did resemble a modern-day St. Francis of a city.”

Prayer of Saint Francis

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

It seems appropriate at this point to close this post with Joseph’s own word…

All my life I had so much backstabbing at home, real problems there. I got to love the animals more, so trustworthy. Fifty years, all I heard was `Shut up, shut up.’ I needed help at home ’cause I was handicapped. They took advantage of me. Epileptic fits since the day I was born.

Because I had so much trouble at home, I learned not to say nothing, keep to myself, just so I can’t be wrong anymore. So they came up to me [the pigeons]; I appreciated the friendship out of a bird more than a person. They’re wordless. They come up with pure appreciation.