A Kentucky pastor who has spent the past 38 years searching the streets for his homeless dad managed to track him down in Bradenton on Sunday.
“He wept two or three times, during the time I told him who I was,” said pastor James Squires. “You could see the tears come down his eyes.”
Last week, Bay News 9 first told you about Squires’ search for his dad. The pastor said he drove from Radcliff, Kentucky to Tampa, after he learned his dad, Bobby Squires, 82, had been arrested by Tampa Police a few years ago, on an open container charge. It was the first lead the son said he had gotten about his dad’s whereabouts since 1998.
In an effort to try and locate his father, Squires began showing pictures of his dad around homeless shelters in Tampa. Turns out Bobby Squires was living on the Bradenton streets and the pastor said that crucial tip came in shortly after the story aired.
“I just want to thank Bay News 9,” Squires said. “If it wasn’t for them, I’d still be in Tampa and I wouldn’t be standing here (in Bradenton).”
The pastor said he began searching the Bradenton streets on Thursday. A few days later, Squires said a Bay News 9 viewer called his cell phone to tell him that she spotted his dad riding a bicycle down U.S. 41. The son immediately jumped into his pickup truck and with the help of another homeless man, he was able to track down Bobby Squires in the area.
“I cornered him right there in front of that tree,” he said. “I just went up to him and said, ‘I’m here working with the homeless people’ and tried to get some information from him. To not scare him off.”
The pastor said he talked to Bobby Squires for about 15-minutes before he revealed his true identity.
“He said, ‘well, I need to go on.’ And I said, ‘no, I’ve listened to you now for 15-minutes, can I talk to you for a minute?’ And he said, ‘yeah’. And I said, ‘well, I’ve been trailing you for 38-years but I’ve missed you,’” Squires said. “Then I said, ‘I’m your son.’ And he looked at me and we just went on and talked. He shared a lot of things with me and then I didn’t want to push him… you could tell he was kind of anxious. You know, he really wasn’t all there.”
Squires said his dad told him why he walked away from his family’s home in 1975.
“He said 38 years ago, something snapped in his mind,” said Squires. “He said that, ‘I knew the day that it did’ and that’s what put him on the street being homeless.”
The pastor said unfortunately he could not convince his dad to come home with him but he’s happy to know that Bobby Squires is alive and where he’s living.
“I just said, ‘dad, we’re here. If you need anything, if you get down medically or going someplace, you let me know and I will come and get you,’” Squires said. “I’m believing that he’s going to want to come home. Because we got to him.”