Brian Eldridge is loved.
Nevertheless it took his death and an uncommonly candid obituary for the world to precise it.
The obituary, published in Sunday’s Pioneer Press, has spread across social media and garnered online tributes from people he never met. Most newspaper obituaries concentrate on the positives. Eldridge’s obituary recounts a lifetime of sadness and isolation.
“Brian was bullied as a toddler and teenager due to his shyness and vulnerability,” the obituary says. “As an adult, he didn’t slot in. He never learned to make use of a pc or a cellphone, which kept him from applying for many jobs. He worked and supported himself through paper routes, aluminum can recycling and janitorial work. He was exploited by employers. His last job was cleansing a bingo hall at midnight for $10 per hour 7 nights every week 364 days a 12 months with just lower than the minimum weekly hours to have any rights or advantages. His employer fired him on Christmas Eve with no notice. He had worked there for over 15 years. He had no friends or family who kept up with him. He was quiet, smart, generous and lonely.”
Dozens of readers responded immediately.
“Brian, you’ve got touched the hearts of people that wish they’d known you, so that they could have tried to make life higher for you,” wrote one reader. “I feel your legacy might be the teachings we’ve got learned and been reminded of. In honor of your life, we must always all be moving forward with more look after fellow humans, especially essentially the most vulnerable amongst us.”
A retired priest in Crosslake, Minn., wrote that he had shared Eldridge’s obituary in his weekend homily.
“You may have heard a pin drop, it was so quiet,” he wrote. “I didn’t know Brian, but what a beautiful lesson for us all.”
A girl named Marie wrote that she got here upon Eldridge’s obituary by probability. “Undecided why today was the day a newspaper was left on a bench,” she wrote. “Undecided why I read Brian´s obit. But I do know that your writing has modified me. Bless you, dear friend. Everlasting rest upon Brian.”
Dead for days
Officers found Eldridge, 76, in his Mounds View apartment on July 11 after his brother called police and asked them to ascertain on him. Brian Eldridge, who died of natural causes, had been dead no less than 4 days, perhaps longer, Steve Eldridge said.
Steve Eldridge, who lives in Philomath, Ore., said he and his family were coming into town and had hoped to see his brother on their way “up north.”
“I called to inform him we were coming and see if we could all visit him,” he said. “I called for 4 days in a row, and no answer, and so I called the police.”
Eldridge said he last spoke to his brother on May 4, Brian Eldridge’s 76th birthday, and last saw him in October 2022.
Eldridge said he decided to be “brutally honest” within the obituary because he wanted people to know the true story behind his brother’s life – and death.
“No one else knew him,” he said. “When our other brother, David, died in October, I mainly explained how his life was shot due to schizophrenia. I desired to be just as honest with Brian’s obituary because his story is gloomy and true. I personally struggle with the query, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ I actually have to live with the guilt, regret and shame that I didn’t try harder to remain closer, to see him more, to call him more, to be there for him.”
The obituary included two photos: One is Brian Eldridge’s senior photo, taken across the time he graduated from Central High School in St. Paul in 1965, and the opposite is from October 2022 during an outing the brothers took to Taylors Falls. The 2022 photo doesn’t show Brian Eldridge’s long hair or trademark ratty jacket, he said.
“Brian’s hair was right down to the center of his calves when he died,” he said. “He’d let it grow for probably 45 years. He wouldn’t cut it. My mom once offered him $10,000 to chop his hair, and he wouldn’t do it. At that time, it was just, ‘It’s mine.’ In fact it made him look much more different than he already did.”
Brian Eldridge also insisted on wearing a grimy tan jacket that “had holes all over the place and ragged edges,” he said. “It was awful, and it smelled, but he wouldn’t placed on one other one. My dad had three or 4 jackets almost prefer it, and so they were within the closet there, and he wouldn’t use them. I kept telling him, ‘You seem like anyone who’s living under the Lake Street Bridge. You don’t have to try this.’ But he was adamant. That’s what he wore, and that was it. Was he attempting to have people turn off from him, so he didn’t should seek advice from them or face them? I don’t know.”
Painfully shy
Brian Eldridge was born and raised in St. Paul, the center of three sons born to Franklin and Cecile Eldridge. As a toddler, he suffered from asthma and nephritis, a kidney condition, which set him other than other kids, and he had terrible pimples as a youngster, Steve Eldridge said.
“He was painfully shy, and it really affected him,” he said. “He got unnoticed increasingly more, and children teased him. I used to be mainly his only friend, and we played together on a regular basis as little children. Once we got to highschool, that modified.”
Brian Eldridge was drafted to serve in Vietnam and sent to basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., for 2 weeks before he was released on a medical deferment, Steve Eldridge said.
“They said he had the worst case of pimples they’d ever seen, and the Army wasn’t going to pay for the medication that he needed,” he said. “It’s too bad because he actually type of liked basic training. He liked being in a gaggle where no person knew him. He had an ideal memory, so he could memorize all of the crap the recruits should memorize, and physically he was OK. He could sustain.”
After his release from the Army, Brian Eldridge struggled to search out work. He landed a job as a baggage handler for Northwest Airlines at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, nevertheless it lasted only a month, Steve Eldridge said. A mishap with a baggage-and-cargo trailer led to the destruction of a rock band’s instruments and amplifiers, and “he got fired immediately,” he said.
Eldridge delivered newspapers every morning and evening and picked up aluminum cans at night, Steve Eldridge said. “He said the very best places were within the Dumpsters behind bars and restaurants, in order that was his income,” he said.
His brother lived in a two-bedroom apartment crammed stuffed with stuff, he said. “You may barely walk into his kitchen due to all of the canned goods on the ground,” he said. “There have been newspapers piled high on his coffee table, and boxes of magazines all over the place. He was a collector. That’s what he called himself.”
Among the many items Brian Eldridge collected: Hallmark Christmas ornaments; Franklin Mint vintage model cars, trucks, and race cars; saltwater aquariums; boxes of Wheaties cereal; cans of Billy Beer; DVDs and videos; paper clips; signed baseballs and Twins memorabilia.
“Regardless that he didn’t have lots of money, when he got any or had greater than he needed in a month, he would buy things like Hallmark collectibles,” Steve Eldridge said. “I discovered 343 of those Hallmark collectibles in eight boxes in his closet.”
Brian Eldridge loved to read magazines and subscribed to greater than a dozen different publications through the years, including Aquarium Hobbyist, Baseball Digest, Bonsai Today, Corvette: The Official Journal of America’s World-Class Sports Automobile, Hemmings Motor News, Minnesota Horticulturist, Reader’s Digest, Solar Magazine, Tropical Fish and National Geographic.
“Those were all interests of his at a while, but he was not doing any of those things,” Steve Eldridge said. “He was a baseball nut, especially the Twins and the Saints. Earlier in his life, he followed your complete major leagues and minor leagues. He could let you know the batting average of each hitter and the ERAs of the pitchers in each major leagues at one time.”
Brian Eldridge rented two storage garages at his apartment complex, and one housed “six or seven aquariums – a few them were 200-gallon saltwater aquariums, that are huge and expensive,” Steve Eldridge said. “He stopped using them when he moved to his apartment 20 years ago, but he saved all of the gravel, the pumps, the lights, the whole lot.”
When Steve Eldridge arrived last month to scrub out his brother’s apartment, he found a freezer stuffed with meat and a refrigerator full of six gallons of milk and 16 cartons of eggs.
“He had began going to the food bank every month, and so they’d give him this big box of food,” he said. “It was free, so why not take it?”
Tries at technology
In his 20 years in his apartment, Brian Eldridge had never used the oven or stove, his brother said. “When I spotted that just a few years ago, I said, ‘Let’s cook a meal within the microwave,’ which he’d never used,” he said. “We got a frozen dinner and put it in there, and I showed him how one can use it, and he thought it was amazing. From then on, he did start using the microwave. He would heat up spaghetti sauce and eat that with bread.”
Brian Eldridge had two cars on the time of his death: a 2016 Chevrolet Cruze and a 1998 Saturn. “When he needed to work on the bingo hall, he wanted something reliable that will start within the winter,” Steve Eldridge said. “He kept them up and kept the batteries charged.”
Every morning, he would drive to the SuperAmerica closest to his apartment and buy the Pioneer Press, the Star Tribune, a lottery ticket and “sometimes a frozen burrito or something,” Steve Eldridge said. “At one point, he’d gathered greater than 2 million SuperAmerica points– essentially the most they’d ever seen one person have. Once they discontinued this system, he needed to money them out. The shop didn’t know how one can do this. They ended up giving him 14 $50 gift cards.”
Brian Eldridge took the gift cards to Best Buy and acquired “a 72-inch TV with a stand and had anyone bring it over and put it in,” Steve Eldridge said. “But after I went there a 12 months later, he hadn’t used it. I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘Well, the channels don’t are available in.’”
Steve Eldridge fixed the difficulty and left a set of detailed instructions, but his brother struggled to get it to work. He also owned 4 computers – “none of which he knew how one can use,” Steve Eldridge said.
During one in all Steve Eldridge’s trips to Minnesota, Brian Eldridge mentioned he was having trouble with a pc he had recently purchased at Best Buy. “He said it was broken,” he said. “I went over, and he hadn’t turned on the screen. While you’re computer-illiterate, the whole lot is just hard. He tried taking a pc class on the local library once, but he said after the primary one, everybody was up to now ahead, he was embarrassed and he quit.”
But his older brother was “intelligent and had a memory like an elephant,” he said. “Once I’d come, a number of times, I’d pick up each brothers, and we’d drive across the old neighborhoods, places we’d been. He would remember the names of neighbors from two blocks down. He was just amazing that way.”
Brian Eldridge lived off his Social Security advantages, and interest and dividends from a $300,000 brokerage account inherited from their parents, Steve Eldridge said. “The one time he ever touched the principal was in 2016 after I convinced him to scrap his rusted-out van that didn’t run and buy his Chevy Cruze,” he said. He left his estate to his nieces, Steve Eldridge’s three daughters, and included small bequests to 5 raptor centers in his will, he said.
A Mass for Eldridge
Brian Eldridge went for greater than 50 years without seeing a physician. He was never diagnosed with or treated for a mental illness, Steve Eldridge said. In 2013, he was diagnosed with hypertension – a medical condition that Steve Eldridge thinks contributed to his death.
While cleansing his brother’s apartment in July, Steve Eldridge found a notice from the owner that said Brian Eldridge was going to should vacate his apartment “because they were doing renovations, and his rent was going up from $1,200 to $1,600 a month,” he said. “Could which have triggered the blood pressure? I don’t know. How long was he dead? They wouldn’t hazard a guess. He might have been dead for a month — no person would know.”
After reading Eldridge’s obituary, Kim Albrecht, director of worship at St. Odilia Catholic Church in Shoreview, reached out to the Pioneer Press and offered to carry a free funeral service on the church.
“We were so moved and saddened by his life story,” she said. “A part of our Catholic belief is that each life is sacred and to be celebrated and honored. I feel that as a society, we failed him, but his obituary has touched many individuals, so perhaps we will correct a few of that by honoring him in death.”
Steve Eldridge declined the offer, noting that the family plans to carry a non-public ceremony to scatter his ashes, but St. Odilia congregants will offer a Mass for Eldridge at 7:30 a.m. Aug. 20, and his name might be read within the intentions that weekend at each of the church’s five Masses.
Albrecht said she hopes people will read Eldridge’s obituary and be moved to take motion.
“I hope people realize they must be nice to one another,” she said. “We just must be nice to one another and check out to be understanding. I would like to be more mindful after I run into someone who is just not like me or appears to be struggling.”
Steve Eldridge said he has been moved by the tributes to his brother, but is frustrated by the dearth of fellowship shown to him while he was alive.
“Why didn’t anybody discover his name? It’s not like he had friends, or anyone invited him anywhere and even talked to him,” he said.
“I just wanted people to satisfy my brother and perhaps empathize with him and to say to themselves: Could I actually have met him? Known him? Introduced myself? Talked to him? Or in some way maintained contact to the purpose where we wouldn’t have discovered his dead body after God knows how long because no person cared?” he said. “That’s all. It’s a tragic story.”