Memorial Uplifts Activist’s Fighting Spirit

The brother of the late homeless rights advocate Keith Petrulis sent a message from California to a church full of grieving New Haveners — thanking a community of unhoused activists for serving as family to the sibling he never knew, and calling for cross-country housing justice to prevent more people from dying alone on the streets.

Around 50 people sat inside Trinity on the Green church Friday evening and listened as housing justice organizer Billy Bromage read aloud a letter by Terryl Daluz, eulogizing his younger brother Keith Petrulis, who died on the sidewalk outside a State Street soup kitchen in August following years without housing and in the midst of a local fight he helped lead to secure better protections for the city’s homeless.

Daluz never really knew Petrulis — but is now figuring out how to remember his brother’s life, as are dozens of New Haveners who showed up for a downtown memorial held in Petrulis’ honor to share stories of how the 36-year-old altered their personal lives as he spoke out for systemic change.

Read more about Petrulis, who was found dead on Aug. 7 on the sidewalk where he’d been sleeping just outside the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen at 266 State St. , here.

“Although Keith was my brother, I did not have the pleasure of getting to know this warm, kind-hearted man like some of you in this room,” Daluz wrote. ​“Unfortunately, Keith and I did not grow up together. We lived a totally different life, in different households, with a fifteen-year difference between us… we met only once, almost ten years ago, when I was first introduced to him by our father.

“Hearing that I had a brother who was found dead on the street was a hard pill to swallow. I did not know how to feel. I knew one thing: No human being should have to die on a cold pavement alone.”

When his sister told him of Petrulis’ passing, Daluz said he started researching who his brother was. ​“I read every article on Keith,” he said, learning that he was an active member of the Unhoused Community Activists Team (U‑ACT), which launched last fall and has since grown into one of the most robust grassroots groups tackling housing rights in the city. ​“I was like, ​‘wow, how noble!’ Here he was dealing with his own dilemmas but still took the time out to help others.”

On Friday, friends and family joined social service providers to fill in some of the gaps of what Daluz and others knew about Petrulis, recalling him as warm, generous, stubborn, and capable of making others feel loved even when he struggled with his own feelings of failing to belong. 

Petrulis, who became homeless in New Haven around the onset of the pandemic, grew up in different households around the region before establishing his own roots in the city’s community of housing advocates.

Those who knew Petrulis during the latter years of his life described him as the person who would approach others living on the street to offer up a snack or someone to talk to — read some of those stories here.

Ali Dillard, a friend of Petrulis’ who has also been experiencing housing instability for years, remembered how each morning he would walk to find Petrulis wherever he was sleeping so they could get some breakfast together. ​“I’m gonna miss Big Grizzly, you know what I mean,” he said, referring to Petrulis by his common nickname. ​“Because I grew up alone —” he began, before tearing up and excusing himself from the podium. 

Petrulis’ adoptive sister, Abigail Stewart, said that she had largely fallen out of touch with Petrulis and didn’t find out that he was without housing, or involved in the local housing rights scene, until around six months ago.

Stewart said she and Petrulis were taken in by the same foster mother during their infancy and raised together along with three other siblings, but that Petrulis moved out of the house to live with his uncle when he was a teenager. 

“He was going through some difficulties and there were some things I just couldn’t be around,” Stewart said. They talked on occasion over social media; ​“I always asked him, where are you living? Where are you living? And he was cryptic… I didn’t know he was homeless, though around Covid he started to keep to himself more.”

Over the past few years, both of Petrulis’ birth parents died, as well as his adoptive mother. ​“There was a lot of loss for Keith over the last few years,” she said. ​“I can only imagine he was feeling left behind, forgotten. But I’m happy he was part of a community here that loved and supported him.”

Ed Petrulis, a cousin with whom Keith lived during high school, pointed to a photo displayed at the front of the room which captured their family sitting on the stairs to their home 20 years back. ​“I look at that and remember a time when he was happy, and had family and direction,” Ed Petrulis said, his voice cracking.

At the time, he said, Keith Petrulis was an avid football player and church goer with dreams of joining the Marines, though he never ended up doing so. ​“As much as he was loved by everyone, he didn’t always feel he was loved,” his cousin observed. ​“Sometimes the thing you feel you’re missing happens to be the biggest gift you can give everyone else.” 

“He finally found in New Haven and in the U‑ACT community people who understood him… he found purpose in the trauma he’d been through and he found people to fight with him… That’s when he was able to step up and become a leader, the person he was always trying to be and always really was,” Ed Petrulis said. 

Steve Werlin, the executive director of the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen — where Petrulis was a client, where Petrulis would attend regular U‑ACT meetings, and outside of which Petrulis was found dead — said that ​“losing Keith means losing a leader in our community.” He enumerated the ways in which Petrulis sounded the alarm on homelessness in New Haven, such as speaking at a recent panel on ​“including voices with lived experiences equitably” held by the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness or offering reporters his opinion on the city’s plans to turn a hotel into non-congregate shelter beds.

U‑ACT leader Billy Bromage mentioned how he and Petrulis had met with the reverend of the church in which the memorial was held just days before his death to discuss the possibility of installing lockers off the Green to provide those without housing a place to store their belongings. 

“Keith and I were in touch almost daily, either at the weekly U‑ACT meetings on Wednesday or at our community lunches and speak-outs on the Green on Thursdays, or over text or the phone, or sometimes CashApp when he needed a little extra to get by that day,” Bromage said. ​“I only knew Keith for a year, but he had a deep impact on me.

“As others have said and will say, Keith was a fighter. He fought every day to survive on the streets of New Haven. And he fought for his rights and the rights of so many people who were also unhoused, some he didn’t even know.”

After delivering his own speech was when Bromage pulled out the letter from Petrulis’ brother.

“I felt a sense of guilt that that I did not have the same experiences as everyone else had with him but it warmed my heart to know that Keith had loving relationships with so many people,” Bromage read on behalf of Daluz. ​“So, how does a person that was loved by so many people, end up alone on the street? Without getting into the intricacies that impacted Keith’s life from a child to an adult, I can say he was dealt some bad cards.

“When someone has trauma that they have experienced throughout their life, it doesn’t go away, they carry it with them, and if they do not receive the right care needed it can be detrimental. I am sure we all have experienced some form of trauma in our lives but imagine having to carry that around, while dealing with health issues and sleeping on the street in the rain. Some of you in the room may know exactly what that is like, some of you may be on the brink of it as we speak and some of you have been fortunate to not have a clue what it feels like to not have a place to go home to rest your head and clear your mind.

“Unfortunately, Keith had to carry those burdens with him up until he took his last breath on August 7th, 2023, on that sidewalk alone in front of a place that was the closest thing to home for him. I wanted to tell his story because I wanted the world to know that Keith was more than just a headline that read ​‘Homeless man found dead outside of a soup kitchen.’ Keith was my brother, your brother, a friend, a loving man, an advocate for social change who battled for equal rights as human beings to be rightfully housed! Please, let’s not let his death be in vain. THIS IS AMERICA! We need the resources to make sure that no human being has to experience what Keith had to experience.”

Bromage then put out a plea for more people to follow Petrulis’ lead and join U‑ACT, which meets at DESK every Wednesday. DESK has also launched a fund in Petrulis’ honor to collect stipends for other unhoused organizers engaging in advocacy work. Donations can be made to that fund here, and eulogies from some of Friday’s speakers can be read in full on DESK’s website here.

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