Lee Stringer: Clean and Addicted to Writing

It was the mid-'80s and New York City's streets were rife with cocaine and the homeless.  Among them was Mamaroneck resident and author Caverly "Lee" Stringer.

Living in a cubbyhole under Grand Central Station's track 109, destitute and crack-addicted Stringer, who is now 60, was digging around for something he could use to clean his crack pipe when he found the long, sharp object that would change the course of his life. When he recognized that the pencil he'd found could be used as intended, Stringer discovered a new high.

"Pretty soon I forget all about hustling and getting a hit," he wrote in a book. "I'm scribbling like a maniac; heart pumping, adrenaline rushing, hands trembling... It's just like taking a hit."

It would be many years before Stringer hit his bottom and got clean, he told me during a recent conversation at Cafe Mozart, Stringer's "hangout of choice." But even while still an addict he wrote. He wrote for himself and he wrote for New York City's Street News, the newspaper of the homeless, telling his own story and those of others of the city's dispossessed. 

After more than 10 years in the streets, Stringer reached out to Doe Fund founder George MacDonald, who met Stringer in Grand Central and referred him to Project Renewal, an organization that looks to improve the lives of the homeless in New York City.  Stringer overcame his addictions, got off the streets, and in 1998 his first book, "Grand Central Winter," was published.

Twelve years later, the book is being re-released with additional material and the rights have been optioned for an off-off Broadway play, and two independent film companies are seeking film options, Stringer tells me. 

"Each time I sit down to write I get another chance to surprise myself.  It's a supreme feeling," Stringer says, "like shaking hands with God."  Co-authored with Kurt Vonnegut, "Like Shaking Hands with God," Stringer's second book, is a transcription of two of their conversations on writing that are as much about life as they are about the craft.

"To some," Stringer says, "12 years on the streets are a tragedy, and it is, but that's not all it is.  Strife grows you," and even before his homelessness and addictions Stringer had known quite a bit of it.

Stringer was born in Ossining and lived in Mamaroneck as a child. The sons of an unwed mother the county determined was not financially stable enough to care for them, Stringer and his brother were sent to foster care in the Bronx shortly after birth.  After six years of weekend visits, Elizabeth Treadwell regained full custody and the boys returned to live with her in an apartment on Livingston Avenue in Mamaroneck. 

Stringer's frustration with the racial and economic divides in the mostly white, affluent neighborhood manifested in violent outbursts and he was eventually kicked out of the old Central School and committed to Cedar Knolls, a residential school for at risk children in Hawthorne, N.Y. His experiences there were the basis of his third book, "Sleepaway School: A Memoir."

After returning home two years later, Stringer became an unofficial "nerd," joining the Audio Visual (AV) squad and dabbling in film-making. After graduation, he took jobs in Dallas and Detroit producing film essays for PBS television stations and came back to New York, founding a graphics company based out of the apartment he shared with his business partner. 

The untimely deaths of both his brother and his business partner in the early '80s pushed Stringer into a severe depression and he took to the drinking and drugs that led to his eviction from the apartment he lived in. 

These days, Stringer's thrills come from his writing and his commitment to giving and giving back.  Stringer still lives in the same building in Mamaroneck, serves on five non-profit boards, directs a local non-profit homework assistance program through the Mamaroneck CAP Center and runs a writing workshop every Monday at Cedar Knolls.

Lacking the discipline and routine many writers claim are essential to their success, Stringer's words come most prolifically when he isn't trying to write. "You allow the book to take over and the author hops on to take the ride," he says.

And what a ride it is.