Colby Magazine : Feature : Don't Call Me Homeless

It was a balmy afternoon in late October, and Macy DeLong '71 had left her office in Old Cambridge Baptist Church and joined the throngs in Harvard Square: students, tourists, office workers.

And panhandlers and other homeless people, who cried out, "Macy! Hey, Macy!" as DeLong approached.

On this particular afternoon, at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Holyoke Street, DeLong was hailed by Nancy, a rosy-cheeked professional beggar who spends her days jingling coins in a cup and chanting, "Spare change, spare change."

With Nancy was Terry Craite, a woman with a Camp LeJeune-style buzz cut and staples binding a three-inch gash in the back of her head. Craite said she had hurt herself in a fall, but her account was sketchy.

"These are all the detoxes I been in," Craite said, pulling a wad of papers from her Arizona Jeans jacket and presenting it for DeLong's inspection. "I'm trying to do everything right. But they tell me about my pancreatitis and all this stuff . . . "

DeLong, a former Harvard researcher, listened with more than academic interest.

After graduating from Colby with a degree in biology, DeLong spent 17 years doing developmental biology work as a senior research associate at Harvard. Then, a decade ago, she left her career as a scientist and took to the streets. Literally.

DeLong, 51, is the founder of Solutions at Work, a self-help group for the homeless. But 10 years ago she could have been one of her own clients, someone who has stumbled, become homeless and needs help getting back on track.

For those who knew DeLong at Colby, it might seem an impossible scenario. Raised in Europe, where her father was an auto industry executive, sent to boarding school in New York, DeLong excelled at Colby. She was a Charles A. Dana Scholar and was awarded the class prize in biology. In addition to science, she studied languages, especially Russian.

"She was very outgoing, very positive, very sure of herself, very intelligent," said Pat Montgomery '71, a long-time friend. "She seemed to have everything going for her."

And she did. DeLong was married to another Cambridge scientist, was a senior research associate supervising laboratories at Harvard, had been tapped by Harvard to speak at public forums on the university's research projects, including work on recombinant DNA. DeLong seemed like the last person to stumble. But mental illness is an indiscriminate disease.

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