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To Mark Hoffmann, the highly visible if little understood “man on the bench” at Friendly Center, maybe Greensboro is home after all.

He reappeared early Sunday morning, to the astonishment of a volunteer setting up at Centenary United Methodist Church, and knocked on the door. This was after leaving the city just as abruptly a year ago and making his way, partly on foot, 331 miles north to his birthplace outside Baltimore.

Hoffmann, 51, a former accountant at Duke who is believed to suffer from schizophrenia, apparently made the return trip in the same way.

Friday afternoon, Friendly Pets owner Mark Ebert spotted Hoffmann walking across U.S. 421 south of town, carrying his usual golf umbrellas and bundles, and offered him a lift to Friendly Center.

“He’s the most famous homeless person in North Carolina,” said Ebert, one of a number of merchants who looked out for Hoffmann since 2001 and grew concerned when he vanished.

“I wanted to be the one to bring him back. I thought that was cool. I said, 'Throw your stuff in the truck and get in.’ ”

Ebert said Hoffmann declined to go back to the greenway bench where he had kept his peculiar daily vigil for seven years — smiling to passersby, never asking for money, holding the newspaper close to his face, due to failing vision.

Yet on Sunday morning, he did return to the place where he first appeared eight Easters ago, a block away. One small problem: Centenary’s Sunday school schedule had moved to an hour later, and all Hoffmann found was a surprised, but excited volunteer, who summoned the pastor.

An hour later, the Rev. Don Lloyd made an announcement that about 240 members of the congregation received with spontaneous applause, as Hoffmann stood up and nodded: “I want to welcome Mark home.”

In Hoffmann’s original hometown, the Baltimore suburb of Catonsville, Md., the story had not ended so peacefully. Raised in St. Mark’s Catholic Church, where he also attended grade school, Hoffmann had shown up at Mass at his long-deceased parents’ parish and immediately was taken in, just as he had been at Centenary.

But his presence as a street person in the town was not universally welcomed and led to a protracted exchange in the letters column of the weekly newspaper, The Catonsville Times.

In a letter that was vehemently attacked by several other Times readers, resident Vernon Wilkens wrote during Christmas week:

“If we invited all the homeless of Baltimore to live in Catonsville, do you think we would be designated one of the 50 best places to live?”

As it was, Hoffmann had already disappeared across the city line and into the streets of Baltimore, to the great anxiety of the St. Mark’s parishioners, and their neighbors at Catonsville Baptist Church, which Hoffmann had also attended all last summer.

What caused him to suddenly leave his childhood town again, after walking and hitching rides 331 miles to reach it? It was the kind of confrontation that had caused Hoffmann to leave Greensboro a year ago, when a homeless couple tried to move him off his bench.

First, according to Nora Reiter, St. Mark’s business manager, Hoffmann was accosted on the street the day he left. Then, when Hoffmann’s sister invited him to visit his parents’ old house, a neighbor came outside and yelled at him as he sat on the back deck. He left quickly.

Reiter and her pastor scoured downtown Baltimore and circulated Hoffmann’s picture, but there was no news until a member of the Baptist church who works in Baltimore spotted him.

Karen Stevenson said Hoffmann apparently slept outside, despite many nights with temperatures in the teens.

With trepidation, Stevenson contrasted this bitter-cold scenario to that of last summer, when Hoffmann had returned to his quiet, tree-lined hometown and had been welcomed to events such as the “Family Fun Fest” picnic at her church. 

A church member named Autumn who is 10 — about the age Hoffmann’s own daughter was when Hoffmann became mentally ill and lost touch with his family — grew excited when she learned he was at the picnic.

“Mr. Mark is here!” Stevenson recalled the girl saying. “I gave him a card!” Afterward, Hoffmann remarked to a church member, “That’s the most normal I’ve felt in a long time.”

But on Monday, Stevenson also recalled how Hoffmann’s homecoming ended up: “I’m ashamed of the way he was treated in my town,” she said. “That people couldn’t see past the circumstances to the person. Who knows what the future holds for any of us?”

Stevenson stayed in touch with Centenary church, and with Hoffmann’s daughter, who now lives in northern Virginia.

What Stevenson did the last time she saw Hoffmann, one month ago, may explain why he began walking and catching whatever rides he could back to Greensboro.

Stevenson told Hoffmann that there was a lady at a church in Greensboro who was worried about him. Her name was Clara Ellis. If Stevenson used her cell phone to call Ellis, would Hoffman speak to her?

“Yes, I would like to.”

Later, Stevenson called Ellis back. What did she tell Hoffmann?

“I told him he’s greatly missed,” Ellis said, “and he can always come back here.”

And so he did.
 

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