Olian Byrd, Santa Rosa man seen and known by many, dies at 62

Seated on a camp chair under a makeshift shelter of tarps and a single umbrella, Olian Byrd held court on the sidewalk near the Shell gas station at Cleveland Avenue and Industrial Drive in Santa Rosa.

Strangers became friends who brought him a daily cup of hot chocolate or a pack of Skittles candy. They offered an arm to help him walk to the gas station restroom, warmed by the 62-year-old man’s broad smile and good nature.

Byrd’s bandaged, frostbitten feet once propelled him into athletic jumps on the rink at the Redwood Empire Ice Arena. As a teenager in the 1970s, Byrd was close friends with the family of Peanuts illustrator Charles Schulz and he once traveled to Europe with a skating troupe.

But he had been homeless off and on for 20 years, and hypothermia contributed to his death Saturday at Kaiser Medical Center in Santa Rosa. He was found by one of those happenstance friends, who saw he was in medical distress that morning and called 911. A Santa Rosa police officer helped track down Byrd’s large Sonoma County family. His mother, two of his children and several of his 10 siblings were with him when he died.

“He was not forgotten. His family loved him,” said Byrd’s mother Avalon Brown, 85, of Santa Rosa. “We have had special days together, birthdays, holidays, there were 40 or 50 of us always there to celebrate.”

Headstrong and gregarious, Byrd chose to live outside - one of an estimated 3,000 homeless people in Sonoma County - after he developed signs of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, refusing most offers of help from family and friends, Brown said.

For more than a year, homeless outreach workers had tried to get Byrd into housing, but his answer was no, said Jennielynn Holmes, director of shelter and housing for Catholic Charities. The homeless services organization received regular calls from people who encountered him, hoping to find him help.

“It’s really important for people who have been on the streets for a really long time, like Olian, that we respect his choice,” Holmes said. “We worked for a really long time (to find him housing) and it was really hard to see him struggling.”

Born in San Francisco, Olian Byrd Jr. was named after his father, a Texan transplant. His mother, a nurse, raised Byrd and his siblings in Windsor and Santa Rosa, including a ranch on Irwin Lane where the family had a garden and rode horses.

He attended Windsor Elementary School, Rincon Valley Junior High, El Molino High and then Santa Rosa Junior College. He became an avid ice skater when the Redwood Empire Ice Arena opened in 1969, playing hockey and skating with friends during open sessions.

Craig Schulz, son of the late, famous Peanuts creator, said Byrd was a close friend. They played hockey together, hung out at the Schulz family’s Windsor ranch and went cruising around in their cars.

“We did everything together for those few years,” said Schulz, 63. “He was a good guy. He had great morality and was fun to hang around. He always had high hopes and high aspirations and he didn’t hold back.”

In 1976, Byrd married Lisa Dutcher, a Santa Rosa High School graduate. He returned from Germany where he was performing with the figure skating troupe when his wife became pregnant with their first child.

All told, they had three children: Jasen Byrd of Oregon, Serena Bowden and Isaac Byrd, both of Santa Rosa.

The couple divorced after about 12 years and the children split their time with their parents. Byrd took the kids fishing and camping in the summer and to snowy mountains in the winter.

He shared with them his love of dancing and old school funk and R&B music.

“He was an awesome father,” said Bowden, 34. “He loved his children. It was unfortunate that the mental disease took over, but he was a full-fledged father in my life until then.”

Byrd sold and washed cars and started a mobile detailing business out of a trailer he’d park at gas stations. He tried his hand at acting, and was in a television commercial for Crunch Taters potato chips, his daughter said.

“His personality was so extravagant, he needed to be in front of the camera. He needed people to be watching him,” Bowden said.

Around 1997, when Bowden was 15, her brother spotted their father in the street pretending to be a crossing guard. That was the first time Bowden said she understood her father had a mental illness.

In the years that followed, many in Byrd’s family tried to help him, welcoming him into their homes, bringing him to medical appointments. Byrd had a bank account and regular funds.

Brown said her son simply did not wish to take the medication that kept his mind from drifting beyond reality.

“Olian wasn’t without a home. He had family. It wasn’t that we left him to die,” Brown said. “People can’t live out on the streets in this cold weather; it makes my heart hurt.”

Three days before Byrd died, his daughter pulled into the gas station to fill up. She hadn’t been in touch with her father for more than two years. She didn’t know where he was living. He had lived with her for a time, with and one of her brothers. The arrangements didn’t work because of Byrd’s delusions. She tried to keep track of him, but had lost touch.

So Bowden didn’t know the man she saw seated on a camp chair next to his neatly heaped belongings was her father. She filled up the tank and went on with her day.

“I wish I would have known, so I could have stopped and said, ‘Daddy how are you, how are you doing?’?” Bowden said.

The night before Byrd died, Nichole Romero stopped by Byrd’s camp with food. The Kaiser employee often saw him on her drive to work and befriended him.

She told Byrd about her plan to visit him the next day with a clinic worker in hopes of getting him medical attention. She noticed his speech wasn’t as clear as usual.

“I covered him with blankets. The last thing I said to him was, ‘Olian we’re coming in the morning. Just hang on until the morning,’?” Romero said.

Byrd’s family is holding a memorial service 11 a.m. Jan. 28 at the Windsor & Healdsburg Mortuary, 9660 Old Redwood Highway, Windsor.