If you go down to Sixth and Pine and see a man in fancy dress selling Real Change, you’ll be looking at Stan Thomas, aka “Mr. T.”
“The thrift stores got my paradise. The architects, the lawyers, the judges are my size. They donate, I buy, I show. People think I’m rich and famous or an entertainer.”
Mr. T has been into fashion since he was a kid. He was born in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, where he and his twin brother were taken from their alcoholic parents. “The state raised us with Amish people. When my mother died, I got to stay with both grandmothers. We had a house that they bought.” Stan quit school in the eighth grade to help pay for that house.
Later, he joined the Job Corps while his twin went to Vietnam. The Job Corps introduced him to two things — one was boxing. “I was in the Job Corps with George Foreman” (world heavyweight
boxing champion). The other was the Pacific Northwest.
Mr. T tried out boxing for a living. “I only had three fights. I loved the sport, but it’s not the kind of life I wanted to stick with.” After going home to Virginia and getting shot, he ended up coming back to Washington state. He tried out bartending in Spokane, but “one of the guys got shot and I quit.” Instead, he joined the Laborers’ Union. “Work got slow, and I came over here [to Seattle].
Then it just blossomed for me, building high-rises, 1 Union Square, 2 Union Square, Gateway.”
The next time he went to the East Coast, “I got stabbed two times with my own Bowie knife. My brother never even got a scratch in Vietnam.”
He came back here for good. “Washington is much better, green.” He rides the bus downtown to sell Real Change because he likes to see the buildings he worked on. “In the morning, I see the sun come up. In the evening, I see the sun set.” He worked hard on some of the buildings around him. “I had to prove [myself] because I was small. I have rods that go all around my neck, six pins. There’s a plate in my left leg, a brand new shoulder — carpal tunnel — from all the hard work. I was one of the best.” At 68 years old, he still pours concrete a few days a month.
He moved to Everett from Lynnwood because the Lynnwood police didn’t like him. “It was the way I was dressed. They was not used to it. They searched me and roughed me up. They came to my house, went all through it. But Everett, since I moved down there, it’s really nice.”
In downtown Seattle, people stop to tell him they love the way he dresses. One man told him he should stop selling the paper and just charge people to take pictures. But Mr. T replied: “I like just what I’m doing. I’m shining on my corner for you.”