Doing what’s right for Trevor

Trevor Sprague lived the last years of his life quietly and invisibly in our community. Afflicted by substance abuse and mental illness, he slept under bridges, known primarily only to those who joined him in his homeless plight and those who try each day to help them.

But his very public death beneath the Harlow Street bridge earlier this month brought him and his issues back into the spotlight of this community.

Or at least it should have.

But the headlines quieted just a few days after his body was found in flames beneath that bridge, because the police got busy with their investigation and decided, rightfully, to say little until they had some concrete answers.

If Sprague was indeed murdered, I believe his death must be among the most horrific homicides the city has experienced in current history. If indeed it was an accident or suicide, it is equally sad.

The police have not yet been able to tell the community the answers it may want. That’s to be expected, for as good as the detectives in this city may be and as talented as our state forensic scientists are, this is not an episode of “CSI,” and the answers to such incidents don’t get neatly packaged up by the end of an hourlong segment.

But while those detectives and scientists have been going about their jobs, another movement has been under way – that is of equal importance – and it says a lot about people in this community.

Shortly after Sprague’s death, Brother Don and Brother Kenneth, two lay Episcopal monks who run the Friar’s Bakehouse in downtown Bangor, approached officials at the Bangor Area Homeless Shelter and asked what they could do to help.

The homeless population is not unknown to the these two generous guys, who do much, much more than make a mean sweet roll.

They’ve been seen in the early, early morning hours handing out hot cups of coffee to the homeless whom they root out of the various hidden sleeping spots throughout this city.

Their gift on this occasion will be to oversee a memorial service to Sprague at 7 p.m. Monday, April 3, at St. John’s Episcopal Church on French Street in Bangor.

“This isn’t to interfere in any way with whatever his family may do, but there were people here who knew him and need a chance to grieve and say goodbye,” Brother Don said over a very good cup of coffee this week.

“This isn’t an editorial comment on how he did or did not live or even how he died. We here in the Bangor community do not even know what his faith was, but it just seems to be the right thing to do,” he said.

The service will be a general religious service with readings from the Book of Occasional Services, which aptly applies to those whose faith may be unclear. There will be a couple of Scripture readings, a prayer or two and a chance for those associated with the shelter to share some thoughts.

There may be 10 people there that night or perhaps a hundred. It doesn’t matter. The opportunity is there, offered up to any of us who choose to participate.

We still await the results of the police investigation. But neither our voices, nor those of the media need be silent until then, because there is more to this story than whether it was a homicide or not, or who may or may not be responsible.

Perhaps Trevor Sprague’s death is an opportunity for us, no matter our religious beliefs, to say a prayer or a thought of thanks that we have Brother Ken and Brother Don and those like them who step up when this community needs them and just quietly go about doing what’s right.