Sometime around 2012, an elderly homeless man sleeping on a bench in Portland’s downtown park blocks rolled off and hit his head. He was taken to Oregon Health & Science University hospital, where he died a short time later.
His death was not newsworthy; it did not merit an obituary or a memorial service. He had been disconnected from his family for decades. He was an unremarkable statistic, another un-domiciled mystery who took the secrets of his hopes and dreams with him when he passed from this life.
Until now.
The man’s name was Terry Houghton and fortunately, he left behind a treasure trove of poetry, paintings and collages in the dusty basement of a family home in Northeast Portland belonging to artist Carola Penn and her late husband, Dennis Anderson. Houghton’s expressive and haunting work is a rare find that is just now seeing the light of day thanks to Penn and Anderson, who sheltered him on occasion and stored his artwork for safekeeping.
In addition to his large paintings and meticulous collages, Houghton wrote dozens of verses in a neat script in small spiral notebooks stored in a cookie tin. Interspersed between grocery lists reminding him to buy cat food, tomato sauce and Sweet'N Low, he penned eloquent verses exposing the heart and soul of a dreamer and a searcher. He was an educated man who quoted Yeats, Blake, Max Planck and Sir Isaac Newton. He explored philosophy, politics, quantum mechanics and economic theory, musing on how these subjects intersected with the conundrums of his own life.
Houghton’s poems reveal a man haunted by regret for the pain he had caused others in his life. He hoped to be a better man and, dogged by addictions and financial setbacks, he searched relentlessly for the right path. At times he felt abandoned and distraught at the thought of what he viewed as his wasted life, but he was never maudlin or morose. While his poems may be full of despair, they spark with hope, humor and a passion for life.
And if God is Love, and Love is blind,
it doesn’t take a mastermind
to point out Love is deaf as well,
And little separates us from Hell,
Save for our own shaking, timid steps,
that lead us back,
from the Precipice.
Penn and Anderson knew Houghton for many decades. According to Penn, Houghton was born around 1945 in Southern California and was named after Terry of Terry and the Pirates, a popular syndicated cartoon strip featuring a teenage boy named Terry who matched wits with pirates and other villains.
In the early '60s, Houghton, Anderson and Penn spent time in the beatnik outbuildings of Berkeley, Calif. “He would paint on whatever he could get his hands on. He would write poetry on the walls and paint on the burlap covering his room with whatever media he could find,” Penn remembered.
Houghton moved to Portland around 1968 and was later joined by the Andersons. They lived together for a short time in the Lair Hill neighborhood. Penn remembers Houghton suffered from spells of mental illness.
“He was charming, good looking, well-spoken, self-educated and docile,” she said. “Over the years there were lots of people he was connected with, but he lost most of these connections. He was off in his own world with no survival skills and could be very needy.”
Houghton’s notebooks reveal he lived in the Westfal Apartments near Portland State University for a time and later in subsidized housing. He was married to a woman named Chris and for 10 years; they had a loving relationship, but her struggle with alcoholism and mental illness, as well as diabetes and osteoporosis, began to get the better of the both of them. He wrote in his notebook, in an apparently unsent letter following her death, “I didn’t know what to do with someone who constantly rejected the actions and attempts of everything I tried to heal and help her with. Months of ineffectual battle resulted in my total exhaustion and defeat. I joined her downward spiral and resigned myself to playing a waiting game where she would eventually tire of self-destruction, and begin to climb back to positivity. Well, as we now know, this was a hope in vain.”
Following his wife’s death around 2001, Houghton’s life also began a downward spiral.
“The greatest complicating factor has been, since my wife died, my growing dependence on alcohol to assuage my grief and pain,” he wrote.
“He was homeless over a period of years,” Penn recalled. She and her husband tried to help him. They would commission paintings and give him short respites in their home, but it grew harder and harder to help him.
One of the last times Penn saw Houghton was on her way to a performance at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall by the Chinese pianist Lang Lang. Walking down Broadway Street, Penn “saw a ghostly figure in a stocking cap. I couldn’t help but call out his name. I got him a ticket for the Lang Lang concert. He looked pretty shabby and I heard a woman say, ‘How can they let people in dressed like that?’ Terry acted like he didn’t hear. I hope he didn’t. I brought him home. He spent the night and that was the last time I saw him,” Penn said.
A few weeks later Penn got a call that Houghton had fallen off a bench in the city’s downtown park blocks. Houghton was in a coma and not expected to live.
Street Roots will be featuring the extraordinary paintings and poetry of Terry Houghton in a First Thursday gallery exhibition from 4 to 8 p.m. Feb. 7. As far as we know, this will be Houghton’s first Portland show. His large, free-form, mature paintings are full of color and whimsy, and his intricate collages are fascinating compositions of the random, found objects that make up the life of a person living on the streets, a testament to the compulsion of an artist to create from anything at hand. His poetry will also be part of the exhibit.
“Terry was an imaginative, brilliant, obsessive and hard-working artist,” Penn said. “He deserves credit for what he’s done, and he always wanted to make his art public. Street Roots is a perfect place to give him the recognition he should have and we are grateful this amazing organization has given him the first opportunity to show his work and make it possible to contribute to the great work of this paper.”
Proceeds from the sale of Terry Houghton’s art will be donated to Street Roots.
If you go
What: First Thursday at Street Roots
When: 4-8 p.m. Feb. 7
Where: Street Roots, 211 NW Davis St., Portland
© 2019 Street Roots. All rights reserved. | To request permission to reuse content, email editor@streetroots.org or call 503-228-5657, ext. 404.
Street Roots is an award-winning, nonprofit, weekly newspaper focusing on economic, environmental and social justice issues. Our newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Learn more about Street Roots