Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O'Connell’s Urgent Mission to Bring Healing to Homeless People

Dr. James Joseph O’Connell, born in Rhode Island to an Irish working-class family, first studied philosophy before becoming a doctor. Kidder and other key figures in the narrative frequently note Jim’s humble character. Kidder describes Jim at the very start of his journey with the Health Care for Homeless Program as having brown hair, blue eyes, and an athletic build.

Kidder and other figures in the narrative describe Dr. Jim as a “saint,” suggesting that he is humble and holy and takes a position of service in everything that he does. Many scenes throughout the narrative support this characterization, particularly when Kidder describes Jim’s first experience at the Pine Street Inn washing feet. Jim, now the president of the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, unexpectedly dedicated his career and life to the unhoused population of Boston. Jim has become like a family member to many of the people he’s treated and advocates for better health care—not only for the patients in the program but also for humanity at large.

Barbara McInnis was the first nurse Kidder worked directly with at the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program and one of the first nurses on the project. Kidder describes her as gentle, short, and never dressed in a nurse’s uniform. Kidder says McInnis was a “lay Franciscan,” which is a person who commits themselves to a religious way of life as defined by the Secular Franciscan Order. Barbara “believed in service and simplicity and in kindness to all creatures” (29). She became a kind of anchor for Jim throughout the narrative and through the work they did together. She reminded him that he is not God; his only job is to do the work in front of him.

Barbara died in 2003 of complications in surgery following a car wreck, but her memory lives on through the program and people she’s impacted. Kidder recounts a time when Jim heard a song on the radio about Barbara—later discovering the song was written by Ben Tousley, a folksinger who’d volunteered with Barbara at a soup kitchen. Barbara is also memorialized by the “Barbara McInnis House,” a respite hospital within the program’s headquarters in Boston.