A homeless man will be enjoying Christmas dinner with loved ones this year, after fate intervened to reunite him with his family.
A photographer for the Humans Of Ireland website was in Kinsale, Co. Cork when he came across George, a homeless man whose photo he captured for the site.
George said that all he wanted was to enjoy a Christmas dinner, explaining “I’m homeless and travelling around to any town that has shelter for the homeless so I can get a bed for the night as a lot of places are full. If I had to sleep out in this cold, I’d be dead already. The only thing I care about at the moment is finding a place to have a Christmas dinner, if I could find a B&B that’d included a Christmas dinner I’d pay the money. I’d even pay €100 for a hotel if I have to, I just want to have a Christmas dinner”.
Luckily, George’s sister Sheelagh saw the post on the Humans Of Ireland Facebook page and got in touch in the hope of tracking down her brother to offer him a home for Christmas and to inform him that his mother is not well.
“All I knew for certain about George was that he was planning on staying in Kinsale till December 16th before moving on. The day I met George I had been in Kinsale for a couple of hours shooting pictures for HOI and as I was leaving, I noticed George was sitting outside Centra having a cup of tea. So that was my starting point. I rang that Centra on Tuesday morning and was talking to Eric who was very helpful, told him the story, emailed him the picture I took of George and gave him my contact number to pass on if he saw George,” said Lee of the Humans Of Ireland page.
“I didn’t hear anything back for 2hrs (I’m really impatient) so I rang the Kinsale Tourist office and got talking to a lovely lady called Angela who was also very helpful. About an hour later my phone rang, I didn’t recognise the number..could it be George? I answered hoping it wasn’t just one of my friends with a new number when a voice said, “Is that Lee? This is George, I believe you were looking for me.”
George has since been put in touch with his sister Sheelagh and will travel to Dublin next week to reunite with his family for Christmas. After Cork’s 96FM featured George’s story, local business owners came forward to offer him new clothes and a room in the Clarion Hotel the night before he leaves for Dublin.
