On Father's Day, the Gift of a Long-Lost 'Hello'

D.C. Shelter Residents Make Connections With Phones Lent by Wireless Company

Inside the main room at the Central Union Mission in the District, a preacher was leading homeless men through a rousing church service. Voices were singing. Tambourines were rattling. A chorus was chanting "Glory to His Name."

But in the lobby outside the room, that was all background noise as James Curtis Jr. tried to make a more earthly connection.

Using a borrowed cell phone, he was trying to call his dad.

Curtis, 32, said he had hadn't seen him in about a year, since the time when Curtis was sleeping in a McDonald's near Howard University and his father visited and gave him a couple of dollars.

Since then, Curtis said, they hadn't been in touch. He didn't even have a phone number.

But yesterday, two employees of the Sprint company came to the mission, at 14th and R streets NW, with six mobile phones. They were offering free calling for Father's Day.

They told Curtis it was all right to call information.

"Alexandria, Virginia," he said to the operator. "I'm trying to locate James Curtis Sr."

The event was the third time that Sprint representatives brought phones to the shelter, following visits on Veterans Day and Thanksgiving. Both previous times, Sprint representative Michiko Morales said, about 80 calls were made -- to family, potential employers and social service agencies.

The turnout was lower yesterday, with about 40 calls made.

But at the shelter, which has 82 beds, residents said each call counted. Many of them had stories about lives disjointed by drugs, money shortages or other problems -- cut off from the kind of electronic communication that has become a given, even an annoyance, for most people.

There was Anthony Harris, 40, who was in Phase 1 of the mission's five-phase program for weaning its residents off drugs and alcohol. He wanted to call a friend from the old neighborhood around 18th Street and Columbia Road NW.