Editor’s note: This story originally appeared in the Concord Monitor on May 5.

CONCORD, N.H.

The young woman with the familiar last name was seated in the Friendly Kitchen, her eyes focused on her cellphone, hidden under shoulder-length blonde hair.

She’s homeless, short on money, her life stuffed into a knapsack, just like so many others who come to this place for a free meal. The kitchen is one of Concord’s humanitarian jewels, a place to not only eat but to avoid being judged by a public that doesn’t get it, that homelessness can happen to anyone.

The woman, named Allie Eckersley, moved her eyes off her cell, to me. We had met two days earlier, at a homeless camp hidden in the woods, when a pair of Concord cops were visiting encampments in the city. That day, they told her and her boyfriend they were trespassing on private property. They’d have to move on.

Unlike other homeless people I met that day in the woods, Allie gave me her full name and talked about homelessness in the city and what led to this point in her young life. She didn’t say much about her family, but her surname and its spelling had a familiar ring.

It’s the same last name as a Hall of Fame pitcher. And it says online that this pitcher – universally known as Eck – and his second wife, Nancy, have an adopted daughter together. Her name is Allie. She suffers from mental illness. She’s 22. The Allie I met looked about that age.

I had to go back, find out, so I approached Allie, finding her among the lunchtime crowd at the Friendly Kitchen, and asked. Yes, her father is indeed famous, she said. In fact, he’s really famous.

“Dennis,” Allie said, after I asked for her dad’s name.

Dennis Eckersley?

Yep.

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