By Michael Allen, Free Press Staff Writer | Friday, June 23, 1989

Framed by giant ash and poplar trees, the hobo encampment along the banks of the Winooski River was a special place for Dennis Racine.

In 1983 he and Joe Martin had built the encampment, a sheltered area filled with armchairs, mattresses, cupboards, bookcases, a clothesline, a toilet, a file cabinet and a plastic drum – things the men dragged there over the years.

Racine died three weeks ago in a favored armchair in the encampment, and Martin mourned his loss at the camp as the sky grew dark, the mosquitoes grew fiercer and a tree limb burned in a fire nearby.

“I’ll tell you how Dennis lived. Dennis was my best buddy – my partner for 30 years,” said Joe Martin, who first met Racine when the two were teenagers in Burlington. “We drank together.”

“I never thought in my born days that Dennis will die in a chair without me. I’m the one with the bad lungs,” Martin said, pointing to an armchair covered with a sheet.

“What they said was, he curled up and died of his own phlegm. I expect that to happen to me because I’m a cougher and a hacker. But, Denny …” He shook his head in disbelief.

Racine spent 25 years as a street person – becoming a fixture on North Street in Burlington’s Old North End. His friends said he went to the street to die.

“When I die, I want to die alone; by the river,” his friends recalled him telling them time and again. “I don’t want no tears; I don’t want no flowers.”

When his final hour came the evening of June 1, Racine, 29 days short of his 44^th birthday, went to the encampment by the river, got into his favored armchair and died.

He was the best known of the three transients who died between May 30 and June 1, officials said. Police have ruled the deaths of Oinus Jones and Keith Destrom, who died that same week, were homicides.

But Racine died of natural causes, a victim, perhaps, of years of heavy drinking and living on the streets. Dr. Eleanor McQuillen, chief state medical examiner, said he was in a position in the chair that pressured his chest cavity, stopping his breathing. Blood tests to see if alcohol contributed to his death are pending.

The street people who were Racine’s closest friends were not allowed to view his body before it was cremated. They were not allowed to pay their respects.

Continue reading “The Life and Death of Dennis Racine: 25 years on street finally took their toll” →