MOUNT HOLLY––It’s a tragic tale of early promise, followed by decades of homelessness on the streets of Charlotte.

When he was 16 in 1962, the late Lee Edison Hansel, Jr. of Mount Holly was an accomplished archer, possessed of an impressive statewide and indeed national reputation. Known variously by “Ed” or “Lee,” he was voted likeliest to succeed by his high school peers, Hansel would go on to earn a degree in mechanical engineering at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He competed for the Gaston Archers Club and won the National Archery Association Intermediate Boys National Championships at the age of 16, and he won in the boys 15-18 age group category in the National Archery Tournament in Illinois. He was second in the North Carolina State Indoor Championships in Winston-Salem in 1963, and he won the Southern Archery Association championship in a two-day tournament in Stone Mountain, Ga., in 1965.

It is his success in archery that earned Hansel, who died in October at the age of 78, a posthumous induction into the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame’s class of 2024. He is its only member to have won an individual national championship, according to Eddie Wilson, the hall of fame’s secretary.

Wilson recently spoke more about his childhood friend.

“Ed was brilliant,” he said.

His sister, Patsy Hansel, praised her late brother’s intellect and how he stood out for it in his class.

“He was the smartest one,” she said. “When you grow up with someone, you don’t think of him as brilliant. He’s just your brother. He was certainly good at whatever he did.”

Her longtime friend, Caroline Bailey, concurred.

“Ed became a national champion and earned the highest award in Scouting and set an excellent example for all with whom he came in contact,” said Bailey. “He accomplished more in that brief time than many do in a lifetime. Everything he attempted in high school and as a young man, he was successful.”

Archery wasn’t prominent in high schools or college. Indeed, it wasn’t until 1972 that became a recognized Olympic sport. Mr. Hansel learned through the Gaston Archers Club and the Boy Scouts, known for their pursuit of developing such life skills as self-confidence, leadership, wilderness survival and personal responsibility.

“He would go into the forest and shoot at targets, and Daddy bought some, and they set them up,” Miss Hansel recalled. “They had tournaments in different parts of the state, and when he won the (national championship) finals, he won that in New York.”

Mr. Hansel stood ready to excel. He became an Eagle Scout at the age of 13. The 1963 Mount Holly High School yearbook has a list under his name: “graduated with honors; archery wiz; president of band; outdoorsman; bound to succeed; Beta Club; Junior Heart Board; French Club; bus driver; Most Likely to Succeed and Most Talented.”

“He had an introverted personality, and he was in tune with nature,” Wilson said. “He was so gifted.”

“He was certainly good at whatever he did,” Miss Hansel said. “He played clarinet in the band, and with archery, he became the best he could be.”

Mr. Hansel enrolled at UNCC. After graduation, he found work in the engineering field. But something, as family members noted, began to happen to him. Some time after his university days, Hansel’s grasp on things changed. He said he wanted to “live outside.” He said he didn’t want to be a burden to anyone and wouldn’t accept hand-outs.

“He had some kind of mental problem,” Miss Hansel revealed. “When he first got sick, he had a psychiatrist he really liked, and that psychiatrist told him he should go to Rome some day.” 

Off to Charlotte and to Rome

Mr. Hansel took his energy, his outdoorsman skills and his fondness for nature and pulled them together. He set out toward Charlotte.

And he spent 50 years on its streets.

“He was very polite and had a lot of friends around town,” Miss Hansel recalled. “He was a very strong person. People knew he did not drink or do drugs.”

He settled into a comfortable place, a covered alcove near St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, where he became the unofficial custodian, picking up trash and yard débris around the church campus. To St. Peter’s members, law-enforcement officers and business people who commuted along Seventh and North Tryon streets in Charlotte’s Fourth Ward, Hansel was known as the “Good One,” and the “Dean of the Streets.”

His siblings visited and “tried to take care of him,” Bailey said. He was the inspiration for Roof Above, an interfaith non-profit formed from the merger of the Charlotte-based Urban Ministry Center and the Men’s Shelter of Charlotte, to help people on the streets and “end homelessness, one life at a time.”

One day, back in 2012, Liz Classen Kelly, Roof Above’s chief executive officer, saw Hansel walking rapidly along the sidewalk, his aim focused and clearly set on something.

“Boy,” said Kelly, “did he walk. He walked up and down South Boulevard; all through uptown. If you wanted to talk to him, you had to be prepared to walk with him. And don’t be fooled by his age, he could walk fast. I recall pulling over one day when I saw him walking in South Charlotte. He let me know he was headed to Rome.”

Rome, Ga.? Nope, as Hansel told her: Rome, Italy.

Kelly didn’t believe him for a moment. But as Miss Hansel said of her brother, the truth was often surprising. It certainly was this time.

“We found out,” she said, “when they called from the embassy, that he was in Rome, Italy. He had a return ticket, and somebody took it. But he was provided with a ticket back. He stayed in Rome about a month. We asked him how hard it was to get a passport, and he said Roof Above helped him. He talked about going back.”

Mr. Hansel stopped “living outside” in March of 2022. He was violently assaulted, his sister said, in his haven behind St. Peter’s.

“I don’t know what the people who beat him up thought they’d get,” she said. “He was in a hospital, then in rehab. He died in there, a year and a half later.

“My father (Lee Edison Hansel, Sr.) once said that Ed was very independent,” she added, “and didn’t want to be beholden to anybody. And some people said that you can’t be any more independent than living on the streets. The other way of looking at it is: you’re completely dependent.”

Roof Above offered Mr. Hansel a bed in its shelter. Except for nights of unbearable cold, he declined.

“I am grateful,” Kelly said in her speech to Roof Above supporters, “to have known this remarkable survivor who lived life on his own terms.”

On Nov. 21 of last year, The Charlotte Ledger stated, “One more thing. Lee’s family was and forever will be sad. But they understand. They agree that Lee was at peace. It wasn’t so much a question of ‘Was he happy?’ as it was a question of ‘Did he live life his way?’ The answer is, ‘Yes.’”