A home of his own: that’s ‘whats up’

“Hey, David!” I hear Terry Austin Sr. calling from his backyard. It’s only the fourth time I’ve seen him in person, but he greets me like an old friend. He’s quite a presence; a tall, dark, slim, handsome, African American man with a lot of energy for a 41-year-old who sometimes walks with a limp. The first thing you notice about Terry is his gift for gab. He can talk to just about anybody about a wide variety of topics. People are drawn to him. I once saw him speaking to a church group when he yanked a vegan from the audience and embraced her while explaining to the other (mostly meat eating) attendees the health benefits of a vegetarian lifestyle. They were there to hear him speak about issues of urban poverty, but they remained transfixed all the same. Meeting Terry privately for the interview that follows is the first time I’ve ever seen him not surrounded by people.

If you had to guess, you might think that Terry was a Baptist preacher, or even a used car salesman. You might take him for a motivational speaker and in a way, you’d be right. What you probably wouldn’t know until he told you is that, until about three moths ago, Terry was homeless. And, to be fair, he probably would tell you shortly after meeting you. Terry spent six years sleeping in hotels, shelters, on the couches of friends and sometimes on a piece of sidewalk under an awning near 13th and Locust streets downtown. And then, on April 1st, 2008 Terry Austin signed a lease on a house. When I see him, two weeks later, he’s still carrying a copy of the lease in his back pocket which he proudly displays to anyone who asks.

Terry has had a hard life. Son of a manic depressive mother, he started selling drugs at age 10 to help provide for his family. He would go on to spend seven years in prison on drug related charges. Ask him how, after years of incarceration and living on the streets, he was able to turn his life around and he’ll tell you it had a lot to do with a guy named Jay Swoboda and a magazine called “Whats Up.”

Ask Terry what exactly “Whats Up Magazine” is and you’ll get a mouth full, “’Whats Up Magazine’ is a 501c3 non profit organization based in urban issues, social awareness, entertainment and resources. What ‘Whats Up’ does is give people in hard luck situations an opportunity for transitional employment as well as an information distributing network…” He goes on from there, but I’ll spare you the rest. It’s a lengthy description that I can tell he’s memorized word for word, but it still sounds spontaneous coming out of his mouth. It’s one of his gifts. To make a long story short, “Whats Up” is a street newspaper. It started in Boston and the St. Louis edition is published by Jay Swoboda. The magazine is sold on the streets by people who are or have been homeless. For some of the latter, proceeds from magazine sales are what keep them off the streets. Such is the case for Terry Austin, who writes for the magazine in addition to being its star vendor and chief evangelist.

Just like you probably couldn’t peg Terry Austin as having been homeless just by looking at him, you probably couldn’t peg Jay Swoboda either. Young, clean cut with closely cropped hair, he looks nothing like the old hippie-professional-social-service type and every bit of the university educated real estate developer that he is. He looks like he’d be more comfortable in Cardwell’s on the Plaza (as a manager or patron) than he would be running an organization called The Homeless Empowerment Project. Perhaps because he’s a business man and not just a bleeding heart liberal, Jay Swoboda sought out a market based solution to the problem of homelessness. “Whats Up” vendors sell the magazine for a dollar an issue. They reimburse the publisher 25 cents for each issue sold and keep the 75 cent profit. Give a panhandler a quality product to sell and he can transform from a beggar to a vendor overnight.

As difficult as Terry and Jay are to pin down as individuals, they are even more unlikely partners. In addition to the differences in their ages, races and backgrounds, Jay is every bit as laid back and unassuming as Terry is outgoing and gregarious. For a guy who spends a lot of his time and money helping the homeless, Jay is humble to a fault. He’s not one to sing his own praises, but then Terry is more than happy to do the praising, “Jay is a Godsend. That man has a heart that has been touched by God. He’s one of the best people I’ve ever met.”

You might think that a magazine about homelessness would be a real drag to read. But you’d be wrong. For one thing, “Whats Up” isn’t just about homelessness; it also touches on entertainment and urban living. Some of its past and present contributors include photographer and radio personality Scratchy Bob Reuter, local impresario Beatle Bob and Malcolm Gladwell, best-selling author of “Blink” and “The Tipping Point”
Since coming on board with “Whats Up Magazine” Terry has started the “Faces of Homelessness Speaker Series” where he speaks before groups about his life and the minutiae of living on the streets: from police harassment, to exploitation by temporary employment agencies, even having to—shall we say—schedule one’s biological functions around the hours of the main library, downtown. During our interview he tells a story about being put out of a homeless shelter on a freezing Christmas morning; the types of things that are probably the furthest from your mind when you’re confronted with someone in shabby clothes asking for your spare change.

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote that there are no second acts in American lives. I have to wonder what he’d make of Terry Austin Sr.; homeless ex-con turned magazine writer and public speaker. Terry is by no means out of the woods. He still has to struggle. Aside from a disability check, sales of “Whats Up” are his sole source of income and sales have been down since moving in to his new place. As happy as he is to have a home of his own, living in West County without a car is no picnic when the hot spots for magazine sales are in the city.

Wrapping up our interview, I tell Terry “I don’t know when this will be published, but I’ll let you know as soon as the issue hits the streets.”

To this, Terry says, “You’ve got my address. You can just send me a copy.” Then, he smiles and repeats, “‘you’ve got my address.’ I just love saying that.”

You can e-mail David Noble Dandridge at davidwraith@yahoo.com.