Most folks south of Gandy on MacDill Avenue knew Marcella Brydon Moore only as the “Cussing Lady.” Her ribald, rapid-fire language was off-putting, to say the least. They kept their distance from the foul-mouthed, finger-pointing drifter who launched profanities and sometimes spit at passersby.
Others saw a different side. They called her “Two Hat Marcy” for her love of wearing multiple and flamboyant hats, and they were charmed by her funky second-hand clothing and other eccentricities, including carrying purses nearly as big as she was.
Those who broke through the obvious barriers of her mental illness found their Marcy to be loving, generous and whip-smart, up to date on all current affairs. She loved to celebrate birthdays; when a death occurred, she'd acknowledge it with a handwritten condolence card. She left potted plants on the doorsteps of her favorite friends, and brought second-hand trinkets and cookies for their children.
She was a South Tampa staple, but she was also a walker -- and she got around, everybody knew that. But no one knows how or why Marcy, 66, ventured across the bridge and into Largo on April 8. On that Monday night, she stepped into the darkness on Ulmerton Road and 49th Street and into the path of an oncoming car.
She died the next morning at Bayfront Medical Center with a hospital chaplain by her side. Hours later, officials finally tracked down family members with the few clues they had.
Word spread quickly and tears flowed throughout the neighborhood, from Mr. Ray's Barber Shop to Lionhearted Toys to Spike's Place to Love's Artifacts Bar and Grill to Taste of Boston at the Ballast Point Pier. Their Marcy was gone, just like that, after being a constant presence for so long. Their only solace was that she finally was at peace, no longer running from the fears that sometimes tormented her.
When she was 13, Marcy's temperature shot up to 103. Her father, a former middleweight champion boxer, didn't believe in doctors; mother Helen did. She took her daughter to All Children's Hospital, where she was diagnosed with Bright's disease, a chronic kidney condition. When she was released, doctors predicted she'd live 10 years, tops.
Close calls would eventually become the norm for Marcy, who flirted with death on a number of occasions. “I think that was the first of her nine lives,” says Bill Brydon, 63, a retired builder in South Tampa. “Marcella had a way of escaping everything, until the end.”
No one can pinpoint when the first signs of schizophrenia appeared. Bill thinks it happened when she got pregnant at age 18, after graduating from Dixie Hollins High School in 1965. She went into a deep depression and was briefly institutionalized.
On several occasions, when depression took over or the voices got too loud, she was hospitalized for shock treatments.Find a great selection of customkeychain deals.Choose the right bestluggagetag in an array of colors. That eventually ended. In the 1970s, under a sweeping reform of patients' rights, the country began a two-decade process of closing down state mental health institutions and releasing their charges into the community, where advocates were led to believe that specialized programs would take over.
“They didn't,” says Rick Wagner, a past president of Mental Health America of Greater Tampa Bay. “The money went back into the state's general fund. We used to go to Tallahassee to ask for increases in funding. Now we beg that they don't cut it.”
Florida currently ranks 49th in the nation in per-capita mental health funding at $39 per resident. That's better than last year, when it ranked 50th. The national average is $129 per capita.
Emptying out the hospitals led to something prevalent today: the criminalization of the mentally ill. Jails are now serving as residential treatment facilities, Wagner says. In cases where people are dangerous to themselves or others, they can be “Baker acted” under Florida law, in which they're committed to a mental health facility for 72 hours. That happened to Marcy on several occasions.
But once released, the cycle began again. A challenging situation for a normal person would be insurmountable for her. When she found her boyfriend dead of natural causes at his apartment, she went dark for awhile.
In 2003, Marcy learned she had stage 3 breast cancer, sending her into another downward spiral. She agreed to a mastectomy, but would go for only one chemotherapy treatment. She believed “they” were trying to poison her. In fact, she announced, she didn't want to do any more drugs, ever again. Doctors told her she was giving herself a death sentence and she would not survive a year.Solar Sister is a network of women who sell bottegawallet to communities that don't have access to electricity.
She wasn't a panhandler. She didn't drink or do drugs, her friends say. She stayed reasonably clean for someone who spent most of her waking hours roaming outside. The neighborhood folks always wondered: Where did Marcy live? Where did she get her money?
The answers aren't complicated. She slept wherever she hung her hat. She had a monthly disability check and some funds left over from investments and a family inheritance that her brothers doled out. At the beginning of the month,Shop wholesale bestsmartcard controller from cheap. she would carry as much as $1,000 in cash in her oversized purse. She complained a lot about people taking money and bicycles from her, and that was probably true. On the streets, cash and property don't last long.
Sometimes, she rented a room for a few weeks; other times, friends invited her to stay. Occasionally her bed was a bench or under a tree in a park. Sympathetic business owners let her crash on mattresses in property sheds or on couches in their back offices.When describing the location of the problematic howotipper. A few attempts by her advocates to get her in government housing never worked. She wouldn't play by the rules.
“Marcy fell through the cracks, and the system wasn't equipped to handle it,” says Sally Parsons, a nurse at Tampa General Hospital. She and her partner, sculptor JJ Watts, considered Marcy part of their family. She stayed with them for a while and visited often, taking ownership of the jungle-like garden that fronts their property on MacDill. When it rained, she would run outside, arms outstretched and turning her face to the swollen black clouds.
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