Welcome to the Tribune Special “Queens For The Holidays.”

The holidays have different meaning for each of us.

To me, like most, it means family, gift-giving (and receiving) and a bit of cultural or religious tradition - we light the Menorah each night to celebrate Hanukkah.

We also have traditionally shared in the Christmas holiday with friends and neighbors. For my Tribune family, the Holiday has different meaning. Yes we party and take part in a bit of gift giving. But the true meaning of the holiday for our publication came to us in the winter of 1987.

In our Thanksgiving issue - 21 years ago, we led on the front with a story of a lawsuit over the City’s Homeless Shelter Plan. Inside, we featured the seasonal story of “Queens Residents Give Thanks.”

Avery Mendez, a homeless resident of Queens, was used to illustrate both stories. His front-page photo accompanied the Homeless Lawsuit story and also referred the reader to the inside Queens Thanksgiving feature.

Inside we wrote:

“Avery Mendez, 70, is one of the borough’s homeless. He has been for five years. Mendez’ fingernails and hands were crusted and filthy. He wore two different shoes and held a styrofoam cup near his crutches, which were propped up against Alexander’s Department store window on Roosevelt Ave.

‘I was the victim of a hit and run driver. It left me a cripple,’ said Mendez. But he also admitted to being thankful for what he has. ‘I believe in Christ and trust in the Lord. I don’t know what I’ll do on Thanksgiving, but maybe I’ll go to a shelter or hospital.’ Mendez admitted that if he had a wish to make on Thanksgiving, he would want a decent hot meal and some clean clothes.

According to Mendez, he draws $480 a month government disability pension, but that is not enough to keep him going, he explained.

‘I just got out of Queens General Hospital. I got my head split open because I didn’t want to give up my money.’”

The next week, on the front page of the Tribune (Dec. 3, 1987) in the led story titled “A Homeless Victim,” we lead with:

“Avery Mendez is dead.

“The 70-year-old homeless Flushing man, who was featured on the cover of last week’s Tribune was picked up by the Emergency Medical Service technicians from the spot he called home, on the street at 40th Road and Main Street, last Friday, with a body temperature 30 degrees below normal. Despite efforts at Booth Memorial Hospital for five hours, Mendez went into cardiac arrest and died at 1:30 p.m.”

As we wrote in the editorial, ‘A Death Touches Us,’ that week: “It was one of those rare occasions in which a community newspaper unknowingly gets involved in a story as it is happening. It touched us deeply.”

On that cold November of 1987, the night after his Thanksgiving meal, Avery Mendez succumbed to five years of homelessness.

His death touched us then and still touches us now. He was, and still is, our symbolic victim of our society’s failure to help the least fortunate. For each of the five years before Mendez’ death and for every year since, we have been writing that the homeless make the headlines as the first frost approaches and disappear from thought with each spring.

We failed him. We all continue to fail to deal with the homeless problem adequately.

For us at the Trib, Avery Mendez shall remain our symbol of one of the most shameful failures of our City and our society.

In that edit in 1987, we asked: “Politics, bureaucracy and community interests considered, what is a human life worth?”

Yes, the holiday means family and gift-giving for some of us.

For the Queens soldiers stationed in Afghanastan or Iraq, the holiday may have a different meaning.

For the borough’s homeless all we can hope for is that the compassion of the holiday spirit will permit an inept, underfunded government bureaucracy and a politically failing system to find the resources to deal with our least fortunate citizens.

Avery Mendez is dead.

At the Tribune, as long as there are homeless, his memory shall live.

Michael Schenkler can be reached via this contact form.

Queens Tribune Dec. 3, 1987, a week after he appeared on the Tribune front page above, Avery Mendez was the news as he succumbed to five years of homelessness.