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And the Kafka Nonfiction Award Goes to. . .

. . .one Adam Kropiewnicki, whose plight was immortalized deep inside an LA Times story about the emptying of a shelter for the NYC homeless in rural New York. Kropiewnicki, 61, was

a wordless, sweet-tempered Polish man known locally as "the Walker." Every morning for seven years, he set out on foot looking for work as a day laborer. But not until last fall did anyone call an interpreter to the site to speak to him in Polish, said Courtney Denniston, 27, a case manager supervisor.

"The first words out of his mouth were: 'Home. I just want to go home,' " Denniston said. He had come to the U.S. illegally to work as an asbestos handler, but when he lost the job, he had no money to fly home. He had a wife and children in Warsaw.

Volunteers of America, the nonprofit contracted by the city to run Camp LaGuardia, bought Kropiewnicki a one-way ticket to Poland. Staff members asked him to be ready at 2 p.m. on the day of the flight, but he was packed and sitting outside with his suitcases, beaming, at 8 a.m. Denniston loves to tell that story. "He had been waiting seven years for someone to ask him what he wanted," she said.

Posted by Josh Harkinson on 01/09/07 at 5:49 PM | E-mail | Print | Digg | de.licio.us | Reddit | Newsvine | Yahoo! MyWeb | StumbleUpon | Netscape | Google |