What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Barbara's husband was named Bill, and he played an important role in Samples' life. Bill was a bear of a man, a 300-pound auto mechanic who was always working in his garage. Bill, a Vietnam veteran, nicknamed Samples "Halibi"--because he always had an excuse for any trouble he caused or found himself in.

Samples and his mother stayed with Bill and Barbara for a few weeks. Bill made sure the father never came back in the picture. "I went over there," Bill says, "and told him if he touched her again, I would bury him." That was that.

After they'd moved on, and after his mother's divorce, Samples lost track of Bill, the guy who gave him the nickname his mom still uses.

Flash forward 16 years. A few months ago, Samples came across a tall, shriveled man named William Dolphus Banks, a regal-sounding name for someone who was known on the street for giving the finger to the cops when they would roust him for sleeping outside. Something about Banks pulled Samples in.

"He's one of my favorites," Samples says. "I've taken maybe 100 photographs of this one guy alone. There was something just really cool about this guy. He's telling me he wants me to help find his daughter, try and get his photograph in the paper. He wants to be able to come back home for the holidays...He's an angry--but lovable; he's got a sort of Santa Claus thing about him--guy. He's harmless, too. He's just got a big bark."

There are two photographs of Banks in Samples' Hero to Zero show: One is simply a shot of his oversized boots, either the cause or the result of his foot problems. The other shows off his particular talent for flipping off police officers. This was the one that caught the eye of Samples' mother.

She'd flown in from Indiana to see Samples' first big solo show, just before Thanksgiving at the gallery at South Side on Lamar. Samples had told his mother what he'd been doing, but he hadn't been able to show her yet. They sat down to look at some of his work.

"Wait, wait, wait--go back," his mother instructed. "Is that Bill Banks?"

That's when it finally clicked. William Dolphus Banks was the same Bill Banks that had taken him and his mother in so many years ago. He'd lost maybe 100 pounds, but it was the same guy. Mary Gunther hadn't seen him in 13 years, but she recognized him immediately.

"He looks the same to me," she says. "I mean, he hasn't changed, really, looks-wise. It was just not what I expected to see. It just brought tears to my eyes. And I guess Hal just wasn't in it for that at the time, so he just didn't even register that he might actually know one of these people."

Two weeks after the discovery, Samples is sitting across from Bill at The Stewpot. Samples may not have known who Bill was when he was taking pictures of him, but Bill knew who Samples was the whole time. He just didn't want to tell him that he knew.

"You didn't know I was such an obnoxious motherfucker, did you?" Bill asks. The voice coming from behind his shaggy, yellowing mustache is just above a whisper. He is a third of his former self, his 311 pounds shrunk down to less than 200. "You didn't hear about me after I got crazy. I'm not a nice person."

As they talk about those weeks spent together years ago, Bill's eyes barely hold back tears. He blames them on being outside, the wind blowing too hard.

Bill's been on the street for a few years. His family is in Oklahoma--his sister, his daughter, her baby girl. He knows he made a mistake coming to Dallas. He arrived here without a job, money or a place to stay. Just a van. And now he doesn't even have that.

All he has is a worn piece of carpet he uses for a bed, and a crack in the wall behind a building to hide it in. Samples bought him a sleeping bag, but someone stole it.

"I've met very few people who give a shit here in Dallas," Bill says. "Makes me feel good to know someone cares."

But he needs more than just Samples' friendship. Samples knows that he can give Bill all the sleeping bags and coats and boots he can afford, but that isn't going to get him out of the hole. It just makes the hole nicer. Bill and others like him need professional help, a place to stay while they figure it out. They need a plan. They need the city.

"Is everyone going to get help? No," Samples says. "But what about that percentage of people that can benefit from what I benefited from? Having some mentorship and some focused attention on me and what my issues are and working with me. I guarantee you Bill could be fixing some cars somewhere in six months to a year."

---

The Dallas Police Department finally caught up with James 10 days after Samples delivered the stack of photos to the camp underneath that bridge on Northwest Highway. They found his body on December 20 not far from the camp, at the site on Harry Hines Boulevard where the city parks its sand trucks. He'd been beaten to death. So had his girlfriend, Alisa. She was 44. He was 50.