Who was Blind Bill Sherwood, the One-Eyed Blind Man?

[Uncle Buddy]

downtown Portland, Oregon
summer or autumn 1980

I was one year into a research project regarding compressed-air inventions. I told my girlfriend I had to build an air-powered car, right now, with an old bellows motor from a player piano, and a vacuum cleaner motor. But I had no wheels to put on my car. It was Sunday, but I called around and found one hardware store that would still be open if I hurried.

So we're running to catch the last bus that could possibly get me to the only open hardware store in town. To my left, I'm about to pass a tall, thin old man with a long cloak, long white beard, long hair, a pink-and-black crocheted cap, and long, skinny fingers, holding two little flyers out into the passing crowd. His eyes are obviously not doing him much good. He's chanting at the passing pedestrians, "Please take one, just take one, only take one, please take one..."

I took one of the little flyers, shoved it into my pocket without looking at it, and kept running.

We caught the bus and I read the flyer on the way to the hardware store.

The old man, who called himself "Bill Sherwood, the One-Eyed Blind Man", was a tax protester and a protester against nuclear power, and an inventor who favored compressed air as "God's gift to man."

Not being a sociable type, I never went to the address on the flyer...

2890 SE 90th Place
Portland, Oregon 97266

... but years later I drove past the house (in a gasoline-powered car) and there was no longer a house there. It was a vacant lot at that time.

When my research project changed from the inventions to the inventors in 2009, fourteen years ago, I looked for William Sherwood on ancestry.com and was surprised to find no trace of him. I was able to collect several newspaper articles about him, because he stood out from the crowd--he made sure of that--he was the squeaky wheel type, always protesting this or that.

Articles explain that in 1987 he was on perhaps his last protest: his house had been taken away for some reason, and he was refusing to apply for the veteran's benefits that he could have gotten, and instead, he had taken up residence in a bus shelter on the sidewalk. He lived there for maybe a year, then disappeared for a while, came back in 1989, and that's all I know about him. I don't have one clue as to his identity, after searching hard for 14 years.

Why do I care? After all, he wasn't MY grandpa. Well, he thought he could build exotic fluid-powered machines, and that's what I studied all my life. When I "finish" working on Treebard (by "finish" I mean "stop"), I will get back to work on what spurred Treebard's creation, a new department for my website called "Air Car Hall of Fame". This is to be a repository for memorials to inventors who wanted to do the impossible with compressed air. Of course, until some dreamer invented the light bulb, electric light was impossible too. What we're talking about here is a form of solar energy that was a sort of rural legend up through the 1930s, and then was mostly forgotten.

I'll attach a scan of the flyer Bill Sherwood gave me, and in this thread I'll attach all the articles I have about him. I also have a transcription of a talk he gave at some sort of energy symposium.

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[Uncle Buddy]

Here's his unique point-of-view on hydro power, which is a big deal in Portland since two huge rivers cross there.

Project Independence
Federal Energy Administration
Project Independence Blueprint
Transcript of Fourth Public Hearing
Seattle, Boise, Portland, & Anchorage
September 5-7, 1974

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[Uncle Buddy]

Here are the oldest news articles I have that mention Bill Sherwood.

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[Uncle Buddy]

An article from 1984 and an article and photo from September 1987. I had a chance to buy the original press photo shown in low-res screenshot in the first post, but didn't move fast enough and someone else got it.

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[Uncle Buddy]

October 1987--more details about the bus stop residency.

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[Uncle Buddy]

October 17 & 21, 1987--Bill Sherwood

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[Uncle Buddy]

This is all I have on Bill Sherwood--there is no more--until someone who wants him remembered goes out there and turns over the right stone.

www.oregonlive.com/search/oregonian/

Oregonian
August 1, 1989
BLIND BILL SHERWOOD RETURNS TO HIS BUS STOP THOSE WHO LIVE, WORK NEAR 39TH AND BELMONT ST. MULL WHAT TO DO

Where he has been for the past year, few people know. But Bill Sherwood, a crotchety, blind old man who was the focus of a community controversy in the fall of 1987, has returned to his bus stop at the corner of Southeast 39th Avenue and Belmont Street.

He's not waiting for a bus; he's living there. More precisely, the bus stop is his base between jaunts north on 39th to Stark Street, and south to Powell Boulevard. He has been back for about a month, and, as in 1987, he appears to have every intention of staying.

Sherwood hit the news a year and a half ago when he refused to move from his bench under the plastic shelter for bus passengers. Some neighboring businesses were concerned about his appearance, his safety and their safety, especially as Sherwood has been known to swing a crutch in the direction of a questioner.

But efforts to connect Sherwood with public assistance programs were unavailing, partly because of his unwillingness to fill out government paper work. Sherwood told almost everybody who spoke to him that he wanted to be left alone.

Neighboring residents and businesses petitioned Tri-Met to remove the plastic shelter, and Tri-Met agreed. That led to demonstrations by hastily mobilized Sherwood supporters, who called for Tri-Met to restore the bus shelter.

The transit agency refused, and after a few weeks in the worsening weather in the fall of 1987, Sherwood disappeared from his corner. Although his whereabouts in that time remain a mystery, he is not forthcoming.

``Take a hike!'' he commanded a reporter. ``You put all those lies . . . in there and you expect to come around here and talk to me. Get the hell away from me!''

Sherwood softened a little, but not much. He was unhappy with the previous publicity about his plight, and he said that the media are ignoring far more important stories. He said he lives on the street because of political villainy. He complained of losing his residence through some form of government seizure.

A woman waiting for the bus was treated less amiably. When she asked about Sherwood's heavily clouded right eye, he responded harshly, putting her on the defensive.

If Sherwood is unhappy about his treatment by the press, so are area business people, who say Sherwood has been lionized by the coverage, while they are portrayed as heartless.

Nina Lindstrom, who runs the Belmont Pre-school, Kindergarten and Elementary School at 3841 S.E. Belmont, said that she and other business owners are concerned about Sherwood's return, but haven't discussed what to do about it. She is leery of reopening the controversy that swirled around Sherwood last time.

``Nobody wants to look bad,'' she said.

So far, the Sherwood situation is a stalemate. Tri-Met has stayed out of the affair, except to answer queries from the management of the Peacock Lane Thriftway, which occupies the block behind the bus stop. But even Thriftway officials don't intend to set off a new tempest over Sherwood.

``We're hoping that Bill gets tired of living in those conditions and moves,'' said Mike Dornan, manager of the store. ``If Tri-Met removes the shelter, he'll just go to the one on Powell, or somewhere else.''

Lindstrom, who also is president of the Belmont Business Association, said that Sherwood is a public health problem and is endangering himself by living out of doors, especially when he tries to cross the street.

``He's going to get run over someday,'' she said.

[tommy]

Great history, Thanks for posting!
How things have changed in Portland now!
The downtown areas are overrun with literally hundreds of "homeless" street dwellers now-a-days.
The city disbanded the graffiti removal crews, every square foot of concrete is covered with paint now.
Blatant hard-drug use on street corners downtown, needles laying everywhere,
Unbelievable, but true.

[Uncle Buddy]

Hi Tommy, thanks for joining. I was lucky to live in Portland in the golden days when the decay of western civilization appeared to be taking place someplace else.

I am so deep into finishing (my share of) Treebard right now, it's like wading through knee-deep sludge. Momentum is not enough to carry me over the hump to the goal. It's going to require slashing things off the do list and boiling it down to the absolute essentials. It's been a 5-1/4 years-long sprint, maybe 60+ hours a week, approximately 7 days a week, I can almost taste that vacation that's right around the next bend, or the next, or the one after that...

Anyway, thanks for dropping in, it's nice to hear from you.

[tommy]

Hi Unc,
I snooped around on this site, what an amazing amount of information and coding that you have accomplished!
Congratulations on a huge project tackled and nearly completed!
Tommy

[Uncle Buddy]

Thanks Tommy.

[Uncle Buddy]

How to find out who William Sherwood was.

Go to the Multnomah County Library and request city directories from 1975-1983. Maybe earlier. If you have a library card, you can do this online so they'll be waiting for you. (To save the wait, I used to go to the St. Johns storage facility to look at city directories. I knew about that place because I'd worked in the other half of the building, which was the bindery. That's where I met George Heaton the air car inventor who changed my life. He was on the library board and his wife worked at the bindery with me.) Look up all the Sherwoods. See if a Sherwood lived at 90th Place (address in a post above). Look up the address in the front of the book if no Sherwood is found on 90th Place. He might have been living with someone else, but I think he was the owner of the house. We're looking for a middle initial, an alternate name, an ex-wife or child, or a landlord or housemate, occupation, place of employment, etc.

If the identity of the one-eyed blind man is not proved this way, look up property records at government facilities. Some of this sort of thing might be possible online but I don't know how.

I know of one William Sherwood in the area who is a possible candidate. A man who had a wife in Idaho who he didn't live with, if I recall correctly. I won't say publicly since it's just a theory and he might have living relatives in the Portland area who may or may not prefer to acknowledge their relationship to a controversial character, especially if the theory is wrong.

The name William Sherwood is very common, but almost all of them have been eliminated as possibilities. He was born about 1913 and lived till at least 1989.

If you learn anything, get photocopies and bibliographical references to the source material. Send it to me. I will put you in my will for assisting in this ages-long quest. Just kidding. Like all genealogical or historical research, one man's treasure is another man's trivia.

[Uncle Buddy]

I had two possible Bill Sherwoods picked out but I don't think it's the one from Idaho. I think it's the one from Iowa named George William Sherwood who went by his middle name and had a son with the same name who was called Bill Jr. I don't want to say more about this theory as I do not advocate tracking down people to badger them about their ancestors. I've tried this, and occasionally you get a response, and out of those responses, you occasionally get a friendly response. Most people are no longer aware that there's such a thing as historical research, curiosity is no longer a virtue, there's a stalker behind every bush.

Be that as it may, I will have to do what I don't like to do and mail photocopies of Bill Sherwood photographs to the elderly gentleman who I think is his son and hope I get a response of some kind. I can't say more as I have to respect the privacy of living people. In the old days you'd just contact somebody and ask them about their ancestors but it's not like that anymore, the internet is not in general a respecter of privacy so all researchers apparently have to walk on eggshells. Remember when it was the exception to have an unlisted phone number?

Reminds me of a funny story. A telemarketer once called me and he launched into his speech without permission, so I very gently set the live telephone down on the carpet and walked away, letting him go on and on. Five minutes later I passed the phone and he was still droning on, then suddenly he stopped, and a few seconds later I could hear some very salty language coming from the phone.

I'm attaching a good shot of Bill Sherwood's face from a press photo I was able to buy online. I spent some money on photocopies of the city directories from 1975-1985 and I see only one way to proceed, unless someone in Portland knows how to do property records research locally there.

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