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Amazing Grace: Willie Dee Wimberly,
December 18, 1918–March 15, 1992, by Murphy Davis
M a y 1 9 9 2
It was, as I recall, a cold gray afternoon in early 1983. I was on house duty
and came into the living room to find an Atlanta police officer standing beside
an elderly black man, who sat with his hands folded and his hat on his lap. His
ebony face was serene, and he bowed his head in greeting as I approached.
The officer handed me a letter and explained that he had been sent by a municipal
court judge. Mr. Willie Dee Wimberly, the judge wrote, had come before
her in court on a charge of criminal trespass. It was her determination that
there had been no criminal trespass; the issue was, instead, Mr. Wimberly’s
homelessness. Could we, the judge asked, take him at the Open Door
We did in fact have a bed, Willie Dee Wimberly decided to stay, and from
that day he became a part of the Open Door family.
Willie Dee’s story unfolded in bits and pieces. One way or another he ended
up in Atlanta (there was a fragment of a story about walking and riding a bicycle
from Milledgeville). What we do know is that for thirteen years he lived in
a makeshift lean-to on what is now a prime piece of real estate in Buckhead.
After he had been there for some years, a restaurant was built on the front part
of the lot. For several years they peacefully coexisted. But when the restaurant
owners decided to expand, they called the police and had Willie Dee Wimberly
arrested and charged with criminal trespass.
We heard that in court Mr. Willie Dee claimed squatter’s rights to the property,
and they said he might have had a legal point. It’s funny to think of the stir
it would have caused if he had been able to pursue the legal battle and claim his
little piece of Buckhead.
Instead Willie Dee Wimberly created a new home for himself, and surely
there is no way to tell the story of the Open Door apart from the story of
Willie Dee.
Willie Dee often stood midway down the main hall in our house. It was his
post. He tipped his ever-present hat and bowed in greeting to all who came and
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