Dayrel Poindexter, Rest In Peace

The Portland single father of four died unexpectedly last month

Dayrel Poindexter, the single father of four that the Sojourn covered in last winter’s Portland housing reparations series, died unexpectedly on August 2. He was only 39. A GoFundme has been established on behalf of his children. All funds raised will go to Poindexter’s mother, who has taken them in.

Those of you who read the Portland Housing Solidarity Project series know that Eugene Dayrel Poindexter was a Northeast Portland native whose children’s mother got hooked on drugs and disappeared from their lives eight years ago. The engineer’s struggle to keep his children sheltered in non-Section 8 housing took Poindexter from Washington State to just outside of Atlanta before returning him to Oregon.

I met the departed in person just once. We texted and talked on the phone a little bit, too. It would be dope if I could explain how his death hit me without sounding Internet trite.

“Gutted” is what people say when the second-lead of their fifth-favorite 90s sitcom dies. I can be guilty of the distortion, too. But this death is registering as high as death among those I’ve barely interacted with register. Today’s news of Dayrel’s demise feels like the Kobe text that my son sent the Sunday morning of that terrible death.

My body buckled, both times. In writing this post, I’ve referred to the subject in the present tense before deleting and re-writing. This death feels just that wrong.

On the rainy evening that I interviewed the man he showed up our diner meet-up spot flustered. One of his children had run out of a parent-teacher conference minutes before our interview was scheduled to begin. I immediately excused Dayrel, identifying with fatherly strife.

Poindexter told me no, reassured that he had activated his support team to track down the kid. He began to answer my questions, candidly. Not 10 minutes into our talk, someone rang his cellphone with relieving news. They’d pulled the stray progeny out of the rain. Maybe a half hour later my interview subject spoke the sentences that have yet to leave my mind’s back burner.

Dayrel’s responded to me voicing a mental quirk around reparations, that everyone Black and Indigenous should get them, except me. I’d said, “I’d feel like I got some help, when I’m out here trying to defeat white supremacy on my own.”

“And how long we been tryin’ that?” Dayrel Poindexter asked. “How long are we going to let pride get in the way of success?”

Poindexter’s mother Teresa, who is already caring for one grandchild, will now house, clothe and love nine-year-old DJ, Zoe,11, Sky, 12, and Shilo, who is 14.

He and I never made the podcast episode that we’d planned on recording. Initially, Poindexter was reticent to collaborate on the content. When he read what was I was writing he became enthusiastic about the podcast. It was my own sketchy housing situation that kept the thing from happening.

What’s funny about Dayrel Poindexter’s pride question is that made me quantify the wide range of financial assistance that I receive from White friends and supporters. It’s no small amount, this unstructured aid that never seems to be enough for my freedom-addicted self. Dayrel didn’t have any of the wastrel characteristics that people can credibly put on me. That man was the embodiment of diligence. And he’s gone.

I don’t know what caused this human to leave this plane, but I’d be shocked if it had nothing to do with the stress of our Black American experience.