For Randy, A Welcome Home

By Mindy Attebery

Today our hearts are softened by the passing of a friend.

Randy Bowen wasn't just a friend of Do Good Today; he was the foundation of an amazing program that has furnished homes for people that are finally leaving the life of homelessness.

It started simply. A community advocate asked if we could help one person. Just one. We said yes, not knowing if we could pull it off. But the community showed up in a way we never expected. That one person became the seed of something much bigger.

We helped Randy in January of 2022, after a request from our friend Anna Davidson. She is one of the miracle workers that Ogden City made their Homeless Advocates. She contacted us and asked if we could find some furniture for her first placement, because he was being homed after decades of living on the streets. We went to work on Facebook, requesting donations from the community to aid a man that they had never met. The community responded in droves and came together to help Randy make his house a home.

To be unsheltered for decades is to be unseen. It is sleeping on concrete in the cold, never knowing a full night's rest. It is carrying everything you own in a bag, never having a place to set it down. It is being stepped over, looked through, and forgotten by a world that moves too fast to notice. It is losing hope that things will ever be different. Randy carried those decades on his shoulders, yet he never lost the gentle strength that made him who he was.

We first met Randy at one of our homeless outreaches in November of 2021, where he came to get a winter coat and some warm gloves. He was in a wheelchair, accompanied by his loyal dog, Taz. He never complained, was always polite, and acted with quiet dignity that eased the conversation with the people around him. He loved Taz with all his being, devoted to him like nothing else in his life.

Do Good Today was lucky enough to make Randy's new house a home with furnishings he never expected. He was more than overwhelmed with the outpouring of donations for him, so much so that he finally asked us to give the rest to someone else.

That is why he is the foundation of Welcome Home. He gave us the idea and the courage to begin helping the homeless community in more ways than just the outreach in the park on Sunday afternoons. What started as helping one man named Randy has now furnished over 900 homes for families leaving homelessness.

He continued to come to each outreach and always had a smile on his face and a kind word for us. He had a community of people that followed him and loved him deeply.

Even though Randy will be greatly missed, he will never be forgotten, by his friends, his advocates, his social workers, or the community that supported him. My wish for him is that his burdens are lifted and he finds the grace he was so deserving of in this life, beyond the veil of this world. May his sunshine be brighter, the rain smell fresh, and the wind blow over his smiling face.