Bye Bye, Bubba
On Friday, March 20, at 2:00 p.m., a congenial but saddened group of Steven Spencer Langbury’s friends gathered in his honor at the Coalition on Homelessness. About two weeks earlier, this soft-spoken southern gentleman affectionately known as “Bubba” died peacefully of cancer.
In a late February Coalition meeting, Director, Jennifer Friedenbach, startled Civil Rights workgroup participants by announcing a phone call from a sedated, thick-voiced Bubba requesting people visit him at the Coming Home hospice on Diamond in the Castro.
I first met Bubba, 59, three months before when he had arranged an interview between me and four male friends of a police brutality victim, a sweet-faced traveler musician nicknamed Ashtray. We met at the tables behind the McDonald’s across from Golden Gate Park. Bubba introduced us, then moved and lit a cigarette. I asked him to join us, but he declined. While we talked, Bubba sat quietly a table away, his baseball cap shading his eyes from afternoon sun. Coalition activist, Mara Raider, told me this self-effacing gesture was entirely Bubba’s humble, non-interference style, connecting people, then letting them tell their story. “Like he just had no ego. He sort of recognized it wasn’t about him. It was about him helping the kids.”
Afterwards, as Bubba and I strolled to the People’s Cafe for a coffee, street kids along Haight greeted him warmly. I was on Bubba’s turf among his good friends. He smiled a few words to each, handing out a cigarette here, a dollar there. He said he gave away a portion of his monthly Social Security check. The Haight and the Castro, where “I’m known as Bubbles,” had been his stomping grounds for a very long time.
We arranged to meet in two weeks. Bubba didn’t show. When I saw him at the next Civil Rights meeting, he explained, “I was sick.” Few people knew he was ill. Even long-time friends didn’t make it to the hospice before he died.
Of the group celebrating Bubba at his Coalition memorial, personal friends Christine Hansen with her partner, Pedro, and Pastor Eric Bergquist reached his bedside in time to say goodbye. He left too soon for many of us, but we honored his spirit with our words.
Eight-year friend, Christine Hansen, 33, said, “There’ll never be anyone like him. I don’t know anybody who can do as much as he did for everybody. Bubba is known from one end of this city to the other.”
Mara Raider observed that the Coalition on Homelessness owed Bubba a huge debt of gratitude for his many years of steady, consistent Haight outreach where he had established bonds and “a special relationship” with young people. The Coalition didn’t have the resources or capacity to reach out to them, “but with Bubba helping people and building up trust with folks, we were able to get information to address problems that were going on and work with more youth better than we had before.
“People felt comfortable talking to him,” she said, “so he was able to collect information about what cops were doing to people. He spent so much time with kids, it was something that without him we would not have been able to do.”
Bubba’s 20-plus years spans San Francisco’s homelessness history. Mara recalled that before mayoral elections, the police did massive sweeps of Golden Gate Park to show voters that they were “addressing” homelessness. But, without affordable housing, people have always had nowhere to go. Around 1997, Bubba and she went on streetwatches together. “She was so brave,” I remember Bubba telling me, “like a bulldog—getting in their faces with her video camera, asking police their names and why they were hassling kids for no reason. I miss her,” he sighed.
Mara remembered, ironically, that Bubba first came to the Coalition doing Haight outreach as community service to work off his own parking tickets. Then he simply continued the work.
Christine reported the police kept towing his very visible red Ford truck. Bubba felt SFPD might be targeting him. Said Mara, “I’m sure that the police don’t like seeing adults drive kids around that they think are scum.”
Bubba was private. Christine said, “You couldn’t get anything out of him [about himself or his motives].” All Mara knew was that, “he was married, had a house and some money, and joked a lot.” He presented himself like a laid back, “tie-dye hippie, but wasn’t messed up.” Pastor Bergquist thought he might be from South Carolina.
Mara checked him out with kids and other community groups. “They always said really good, glowing things about him.”
Christine’s partner Pedro Tehuma, 24, told me, “If a person in the park needed a ride, Bubba would take him in his truck. His gas tank was always empty. Even when his car was impounded, he would still walk the Park checking on people.”
Pedro stated that until Christine was nine months pregnant, they lived in a tent in Golden Gate Park. Just before the birth, Bubba drove them to a family shelter, “because my daughter was coming.” Then Bubba drove Christine to UCSF Medical Center.
Later, a shelter in San Rafael locked their belongings inside and threw Pedro, Christine, and their infant daughter, Ada Fia, on the street. Bubba rescued the family, retrieved their stuff before the staff discarded it, and drove it back across the Bridge. “Bubba had never been that far out of San Francisco.” He nervously asked directions all the way. Then, because they didn’t have anywhere to put their things, he stored them in his back seat.
Inside this vehicle, Bubba posted photos of Christine’s dog, and Ada Fia, who called him “Grandpa Bubba.”
“Once he carried my daughter’s toys around in the back of his truck for two months. Every time he hit a bump, one of the dolls would giggle, ‘Hee! Hee!’” When Christine identified the noise, Bubba laughed, “I thought my car was possessed!”
“Bubba had a huge sense of humor.”
Pastor Eric Bergquist said, “He didn’t seem worried about impressing anybody. That gave him some latitude to be funny.”
Pedro agreed. “He was always smiling, always there, helping people. I miss him.”
Pastor Bergquist provides a ministry at the Page Street Baptist Center, a Lower Haight drop-in facility at 690 Page that helps street kids. Since June of 1998, it has offered a movie and a meal on Friday. “Bubba regularly attended.”
“When he first showed up eight or nine years ago, he was obviously too old for the drop-in. I figured out pretty quick he was there to see his friends, that he belonged and was always welcome. The kids loved him.”
Across from his hospice bed, Bubba posted a photo of a Haight kid, and above it a picture of Liam Shy, sporting a mohawk. “This was the world he invested in” and wanted around him, said the Pastor.
Christine reported, “Bubba was so frail.”
To Pedro, he was thin as an AIDS patient, but the goodbye grip of the handshake they shared was strong.
Pastor Bergquist said he had aged ten years. Without his baseball cap, he looked older because he was bald.
Well cared-for at the hospice, not in pain, “Bubba thought he was doped a little too much. I think he would rather have been a little more conscious. Perhaps he felt “further away,” and wanted to be more alert, aware, and engaged with his visitors.
“He was serious about Jesus, but he didn’t push it down anybody’s throat. It was clearly important to him, and he told me so the last time I saw him.
“He told me he was straight with Jesus and ready to go.”
“The last thing he did was give me a really long hug. Laying in bed, he held me for a long time. In my heart, I felt I had said goodbye to him, and he had said goodbye to me, that I wouldn’t see him again. I left with this sober understanding that he was leaving us.
“He had already set sail. It felt like closure.”
When Mara asked Bubba why he did outreach to kids, Bubba had said simply, ”To be a good Christian.”
For a Southern Christian gentleman, this goal made perfect sense.
Pastor Bergquist illustrated this, citing a Bible passage—Matthew 25.
Jesus welcomes some people to heaven saying, “Man, don’t you remember me? I’m the one you gave food and clothes to.” The people say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. We never gave you any food or clothes.”
Jesus says, “But, when you gave it to the least of these, you gave it to me.”
Christine speculated, Bubba “lost a lot,” including a son, but added, “Bubba loved everybody. He just wanted to give as much as he could.
“When anybody needed Bubba, he was there.”
Carol