Maurice Chase dies at 92; 'Father Dollar Bill' gave cash to poor

[ellisonz]

Source: LA Times



Father Maurice Chase waves a dollar bill. Over almost three decades, he gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to the poor of Los Angeles. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times / December 25, 2003)

Maurice Chase dies at 92; 'Father Dollar Bill' gave cash to poor
Father Maurice Chase was known for handing out dollar bills on Los Angeles' skid row, caring more about the gift of human love than about what his beneficiaries did with the money.

By Elaine Woo, Los Angeles Times
November 23, 2011

Nearly every Sunday morning, Thanksgiving and Christmas for almost three decades, the man they called Father Dollar Bill, Father Dollar or just D.B. for Dollar Bill showed up on a skid row sidewalk. He was a white-haired man in a red sweater and a Notre Dame cap, his pockets jammed with crisp green bills, which he patiently handed out until the money was gone.

Father Maurice Chase didn't mind what name the destitute men, penniless mothers, people in wheelchairs, drug addicts, winos and ex-cons called him. He didn't care how they planned to spend the money. Nor was he bothered by the criticisms other skid row service providers sometimes voiced: that he was a self-promoting attention hound whose hit-and-run assistance had little, if any, enduring effect on the desperate individuals who gathered for his handouts, blessings and hugs.

"I'm out here to tell people I love them and God loves them," he told the Los Angeles Times several years ago. "I met Mother Teresa in Mexico City once, and she told me to touch the poor. Do you hear that? Touch the poor."

Today he would have been preparing for another Thanksgiving on skid row, but Chase, 92, died Sunday at his Los Angeles home. The cause was cancer, said his nephew, Robert Boyd.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-1123-maurice-chase-20111123,0,2885810.story

[burrowowl]

1. RIP

[alp227]

2. American thoughtfulness for the disadvantaged died before he did.

More Americans would rather just let poor people run feral in the ghetto and dumpster dive for food.

[ellisonz]

3. True.

[Fire Walk With Me]

4. God bless and keep him. RIP.

[ellisonz]

5. He's a shoo-in!

He began every trip to skid row with a prayer about serving the poor: "When you have done it to the least of men, you have done it to me." Then he prepared the stacks of new dollar bills he had withdrawn from the bank earlier. "Everything is so dirty on skid row," he told the Los Angeles Daily News in 2004. "I want to give them something fresh and new."

:-)

[ellisonz]

6. Kick for charity.

:shrug: