From the Fresno Bee...
Handyman's Legacy Lives On in Cul-de-Sac
Eddie Willis was a man many people knew. But only one person -- if anyone -- really knew him.
If you needed a tree moved, a faucet installed or junk hauled, he was the one who showed up after you got his name from a friend of a friend.
Willis was the guy you saw around Fresno, sometimes on a bike hauling a cart filled with plants, groceries and one of many dogs he rescued.
His work is on display everywhere. He put in front yards and sprinkler systems. He loved to build waterfalls. When he was done, the bill was a bargain. It was never about money for Willis. It was about putting his imagination to work and occupying a mind that wanted to be freed from the past.
Spring and Christmas might've been his favorite times. Spring was when he made things pretty.
"He was really good putting plants and shrubbery together," says Frank Gomez, who worked with Willis, off and on, for the past 12 years. "He knew how to get grass going."
But his best work may have been at Christmas. He built decorations from scratch and lit up the northwest Fresno neighborhood where he lived for 27 years. "He'd get a picture in his head," says Kathy Moore, "and then make it come to life out of chicken wire, stakes and lights."
Working out of Moore's house, Willis fashioned reindeer, trees and Santa's trains. One year, he put a train -- which blew steam and moved on tracks -- on the roof, and watched with delight as people drove into the cul-de-sac just to see his creations.
This Christmas season, his kidneys and lungs failing and death beckoning, Willis asked Moore to drive him around Fresno: "He wanted to see everyone else's lights."
Willis was a bundle of contradictions. He was bright and carried himself with quiet dignity. Yet he didn't hold a regular job. He lived hand to mouth and only escaped the streets because Moore provided him a room in her house after he lost his job as a school custodian. He was a hoarder who delighted in giving.
As poor as Willis was, Moore says he would hire men from the Fresno Rescue Mission to help him with handyman jobs, and buy them lunch. Gomez says that Willis gave him new tools and supplies, excusing his own generosity by saying they were on sale.
Moore figures that Willis saved 30 dogs through the years. Once, he waded into a crack house in southeast Fresno to get back a prized Samoyed -- named Touje Two -- who had been stolen from his work truck. The rescue came after Willis circulated a poster of Touje (pronounced "TOO-chee") for months before getting a tip about the dog's whereabouts. He pulled off the dangerous recovery by pretending to be a policeman.
Willis valued beauty and family, possibly because he didn't have much of either growing up. At 3 he saw his mother pulled from the house by firemen, her body ablaze, death imminent. His mother had gone back into the burning house for her son, not knowing that Eddie had escaped.
"That picture was seared into Eddie's mind," Moore says. "It was the first thing he saw every morning when he woke up."
Chronic depression cost him his job at Eaton Elementary School in the early 1990s, and he was being forced out of his condominium when Moore, who worked with autistic children at the school, came to his rescue.
For the first couple of years, Willis rarely left the couch in her Fig Garden Loop home. But he began his recovery by making neighbors his family and performing their odd jobs. He lined up their garbage bins on one side of the cul-de-sac -- saving the pickup men a tight turn in their trucks -- and returned the bins to their driveways. He kept an eye out for strangers, earning him the title of cul-de-sac "security guard."
"This is how thoughtful he was," says Marty Garcia. "When my mom passed, Ed went out, bought a sympathy card, had the neighbors sign it and gave it to me. Ed didn't have much, but he did the little things that meant so much."
Willis didn't believe in doctors. He fought depression and many other health problems by himself. He made only token efforts to negotiate the red tape of public health care. He didn't burden the world with his burdens.
Early Christmas Eve morning, he was taken by ambulance to Community Regional Medical Center. He died five days later, unable to breathe on his own, at 51.
Authorities haven't located relatives. Willis' grandparents are dead. A brother was murdered two years ago in a case that hasn't been solved. A sister moved to the South years ago.
But Willis didn't die without family. He created one out in the Fig Garden Loop, at the Rescue Mission and wherever else his work took him. And he repaid Moore, his special friend, while she fought cancer.
"Eddie and I were never boyfriend and girlfriend," Moore says. "But his passing has been very hard for me."
Sunday, the folks in the 6000 block of North Rafael Avenue will gather in the cul-de-sac at 2 p.m. for a potluck. They'll share stories about the quiet man with the curly hair and passion for helping.
Gomez will get laughs with the tale of two 60-foot palm trees Willis was moving ending up in the homeowner's swimming pool. Or the time Willis called the SPCA to pick up a dead fox and got fired because the job site had to be shut down to investigate the fox's death.
Then they'll take up a collection to claim Willis' body and give him a proper memorial service. Willis wanted to be cremated, with some of his ashes spread over the grave of Touje One, also a Samoyed, in Moore's backyard.
I talked with Gomez via cell phone Wednesday.
"I'm on a job right now," he said. "I wish he were here."
