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Bad luck has followed Mark Hoffmann, the longtime homeless man who left Greensboro on foot earlier this year, only to turn up at his home church in Maryland, 325 miles away.

Our friends at St. Mark’s, the Catholic church where Hoffmann, 50, attended grade school a few blocks from his childhood home in Catonsville, Md., report that Hoffmann left town on foot two weeks ago, apparently intimidated by a neighbor.

Hoffmann, who suffers from schizophrenia, was sitting on a bench at a nearby Lutheran church when he was “verbally threatened” by a passer-by, according to St. Mark’s business manager Nora Reiter.

Reiter said Hoffmann’s sister had meanwhile come to visit him at the bench and offered him a ride a few blocks to the family home, where Hoffmann’s late parents raised them.

When Hoffmann arrived home and set his belongings down on the back deck, Reiter said, his sister went inside to use the phone. Then, a neighbor began yelling at Hoffmann that “his kind” was not welcome in the neighborhood because of children.

Before the sister could get back outside, Reiter said, Hoffmann was up the block with his belongings, and Reiter later that evening spotted him walking quickly on a main road in the Baltimore suburb. Though he had been attending daily Mass, he stopped coming.

That was two weeks ago, and though Reiter and the church pastor have driven around to all of Hoffmann’s usual haunts, including the woods where he had been sleeping, they have found no sign of him.

“Mark’s sister is broken-hearted that after waiting so long to get him back, she has lost him again,” Reiter said. “I wake up a dozen times each night worrying and praying for him.”

Ironically, the daughter Hoffmann had been reunited with, after relatives found his story and picture on the Internet in June, recently moved from Pennsylvania to northern Virginia, one hour from Catonsville.

Hoffmann, a Lehigh University alumnus, was a graduate student and accountant at Duke when his three daughters were born. After years of wandering, he showed up at a Greensboro church on Easter Sunday, 2001, and remained an enigmatic figure to those who befriended him. He left without explanation in May, and was spotted months later by a Greensboro reader visiting in-laws in Catonsville.

Reiter said a parishioner who is a commander with the Baltimore police had circulated word to surrounding jurisdictions. She asked that if anyone spots Hoffmann, they contact the church “so that we can bring him home.”

For those interested in the issue of homelessness, a nationally known housing activist will speak in Greensboro Monday.

Max Rameau in 2006 began Umoja Village, a tent city on public land in Miami’s Liberty City neighborhood. He will speak at 6 p.m. in the Nussbaum Room at the Central Library, 219 N. Church St.

Free fair for kids

If Dixie Classic Fair prices are keeping you away, stay here in Greensboro, where the Sportsplex is hosting a free weekend of fun for the 75th birthday of Greensboro Parks and Recreation.

The two-day open house, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday and 1-6 p.m Sunday, includes Dreams In Motion’s “Fallin for Ball” basketball tourney, pony rides, giveaways, entertainment and prizes.
The Sportsplex is at 2400 16th St. Call 375-1528.

Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 373-7334 or lorraine.ahearn@news-record.com