A ‘Bright Light,’ Dimmed in the Shadows of Homelessness<br />She said that as Nakesha had struggled with her illness, she must have asked herself, “How do I anchor myself, right now, in this storm?”<br />“Her discipline was writing every day,” Ms. Burton continued.<br />One day, he recalled, she began screaming uncontrollably, and he asked her, “What’s going on, Ms. Williams?”<br />“‘This is not me,’” she said.<br />Ms. Rocklin responded that she cared about Nakesha and was worried “whether you have shelter at night and whether you are getting enough food.”<br />Nakesha, then 36, replied that she was “not exactly homeless,” but was in “a wandering, unstable state that is sad at best.”<br />Ms. Rocklin continued to receive Nakesha’s emails, which were sometimes copied to politicians and others.<br />“She was one of the foundational people,” said Ms. Bevevino, now an assistant professor of French<br />and Latin at the University of Minnesota, Morris, “that really cared about how we were doing and how we thought about the world.”<br />In 1996, after three years, Nakesha abruptly left Sewickley.<br />Mr. Elhiri said he joked with her, “I’m your bodyguard.”<br />But he regretted that one day he failed to stop a security officer from confiscating<br />Nakesha’s belongings after she had asked Mr. Elhiri to watch them.<br />“What could we do?” Ms. Burton said.
