On May 9, 2023, I met 45-year-old Wilmer Brewer in downtown Austin on Sixth Street. He said he had seen me before out with my camera, talking to people on the street. Somehow, I had never seen him. Wilmer explained he stays to himself, away from the busiest and most visible parts of Sixth Street, which this Sunday afternoon was thrumming with the cacophony of live music, street performers, vendors, and hundreds of people engaged in a million different conversations while enjoying the Pecan Street Festival.
I came upon Wilmer on the sidewalk beyond Red River Street, headed east toward the frontage road of Interstate 35. I quickly read his sign — “DUE TO ISSUES BEYOND OUR CONTROL WE HUMBLY ASK FOR WHAT YOU CAN SPARE!” — and I gave him the little amount of money I had on me. The need to help felt palpable.
So it was that I sat down with Wilmer, officially meeting him and his dog, Grunther Allocious, a 9-year-old boxer and bird dog mix who is as much a family member for Wilmer as anybody ever has been. I assumed that Wilmer was homeless, but he said that he and his wife live in a house in far East Austin, near the Colorado River. I told Wilmer about myself. I’m a photojournalist. I document the lives of people living on the streets. I aim to bring dignity and respect into all my encounters. When possible, when appropriate, I tell people’s stories, a few paragraphs at a time, someday a book at a time. I strive to introduce Austinites to the people who slip between the cracks. The individuals living in alleys and in tents and in abandoned buildings. The people who are housed but still don’t have their basic needs met.
Wilmer nodded approvingly of my process. “It lets people open their minds a little bit,” he said.
Wilmer, without knowing it, proved me wrong on something that often ails me. I worry that I ask too much in conversation with people. This time, I let common sense prevail. Wilmer wanted to tell me his story. I settled into my seat on the sidewalk and shut up and listened.
“I never really blamed him for any of it. He tried to be proud of me, and I think I did pretty good for him.”
Wilmer spent his early childhood in Las Vegas, Nevada, living with an abusive mother who periodically sold him for drugs and who left strap marks on his back. At the age of 13, Wilmer ran away from home, yearning to reconnect with his father, who had done prison time when Wilmer was younger. Now out of prison, his dad was living in Texas, a resident of Graham and riding with the Hells Angels out of nearby Wichita Falls.
Wilmer got himself to a truck stop in Las Vegas, where some kindhearted truck drivers gave him the initial lift he needed. Riding in the cabs of 18-wheelers, and hitchhiking at times, the teenage boy made it to the Lone Star State. He reconnected with his father.
Eventually, Wilmer resumed his education. He attended Austin Community College, and he pursued a master’s degree in industrial hygiene at The University of Texas. He even traveled around the state, practicing his skills at identifying and measuring workplace hazards in the wake of such natural disasters as tornadoes and hurricanes.
In time, addiction sabotaged Wilmer’s future. His mother was an addict, and Wilmer said he was born a heroin addict. He’s been clean numerous times through the years, but nothing ever sticks. He pulled down his jacket to show me the skin lesions and scars on his upper arms, the result of longtime heroin use.
Earlier on Sunday at the Pecan Street Festival, I had talked with a friend of mine on the street who carries Narcan, a nasal spray or injection designed for emergency use to reverse opioid overdose. Just a few days prior, my friend had saved the life of another friend, an individual who had overdosed on Fentanyl.
Wilmer carries Narcan as well, and he has also used it to help save someone’s life.
Wilmer and I ended our conversation by talking more about his parents. As for his mother, “I celebrated her death in 2002,” Wilmer said. Meanwhile, he cuts his father a lot of slack. “I never really blamed him for any of it,” Wilmer said, referring to his childhood. “He tried to be proud of me, and I think I did pretty good for him.”
