Mark Ryan arrived in Sacramento in the 1980’s and worked as an accounts receivable bank auditor for 14 years. He is 56 years old, college educated with a degree in business, and loves studying languages.
Mark has an uncanny ability to recall an incredible amount of factual information. Of his interest in languages, Mark says, “I like Spanish and German but we are lucky we speak English because English has twice as many words, and out of 67 possible sounds, English has 44, so we are hard wired for those 44 sounds.”
Mark looks down at the floor of the Loaves and Fishes library where we have been talking. He looks down at the chairs, resting with their legs propped back, looks up at me and says, “I’m kind of glad God made me homeless but my biggest fear is that someday God would say, “You have learned enough from being homeless” and God will kick me out of being homeless, I’m not in a hurry for that to happen.”
Mark has been homeless off-and-on since 1999.