By all accounts, Barnett Moss was a man of few words.
No one knew where he came from. But Moss, a lanky man with a broad smile and scraggly gray hair who spent most of his time reading books and newspapers, acquired a certain celebrity around the Washington state Capitol.
"It was always 'yes please', or 'no, thank you,'" said Tammy Stampfli, a pastor at the United Churches of Olympia, where Moss slept on the porch for more than five years.
With his expressive eyes, gentle manner, and preternatural calm, Moss was known to some as the "Capitol Buddha."
He was found dead outside the church on June 29, one of the 78 people known to have died of heat-related causes during the historic heat wave in Washington state. He was 63 years old.
A memorial service for Moss held outside the church on Friday drew more than 40 people.
Several people remarked on his ability to communicate warmth, gratitude and empathy without saying much of anything at all.
"It is easier to forget, to pretend that Mr. Moss and others like him in our city don't exist, to cross the street to avoid them," said Lara Crutsinger-Perry, a pastor at United Churches. "But for us who knew Mr. Moss, we were met with his kindness and his gentleness, and we found ourselves offering the same back to him."
Much of what is known about Moss' life emerged only after his death.
Stampfli was able to reach a woman named Barbara, who was once Moss' partner, and with whom he had a son in New Jersey. She learned that Moss attended college in Philadelphia and worked as a respiratory therapist.
According to Barbara, Moss functioned highly despite being on the autism spectrum and exhibiting symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
Shortly after his son was born, Moss, who loved hiking, mountain biking, and camping, got the idea to go to Bellingham and lost contact with his family. When he died, Barbara had not heard from Moss in decades.
Mary Van Verst, an employee at the state Office of Financial Management, first encountered Moss wandering around the Capitol Campus in 2012, sleeping on benches in the mid-afternoon sun, or descending the switchback trail; they recognized each other as "frequent walkers."
She observed that he at first looked tired, maybe even ill.
Over the years she interacted with Moss, Van Verst observed him progress from near-total silence or guttural noises, to one-word responses when she'd stop for chit-chat. She held back her natural curiosity about his past, feeling like it wasn't her place to ask too many questions.
She came to believe that he experienced something traumatic while wandering.
Van Verst began bringing food to Moss every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. She recalled that as he walked up the stairs of the Legislative Building, he'd wave to her from the third-floor balcony, where he sat each day from the time the building opened until exactly 3 p.m.
"I also came to recognize that once he discovered the campus, that became his home," Van Verst said.
A typical conversation consisted of: "Hello, how are you today? Oh, not too bad."
Over time she learned, by asking follow-up questions, the things he liked (peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, Teddy's brand soda), and the things he didn't (coffee, Pepsi).
"What I will always treasure is that he came to trust me, that he was cognizant of our schedule and would look forward to seeing me," Van Verst said. "That regular schedule of receiving food meant something to him."
It meant something to Van Verst, too. The ritual of shopping for food on the weekends, packing each bag with dry goods, fruit and meat sandwiches became such a regular part of her life that when she went on a two-day vacation, she enlisted a staff member at the church to fill in for her.
For years, Moss slept outside the church, despite repeated offers by church staff and congregants to come inside. The church even offered him a tiny home or money to rent a hotel room or apartment.
"He never asked for anything — never," Stampfli said. "I would have let him live in the church."
On June 28, as temperatures hit 109 degrees, Stampfli again invited Moss to come inside the church. Again, he replied, "No thank you."
Others made similar pleas for him to go to the city's cooling center. The following morning, his body was found outside the church.
At the service, Crutsinger-Perry painted a picture of Moss as a man who showed up on their doorstep, seemingly out of nowhere, with no possessions. He asked for nothing, smiled graciously and humbly accepted only basic necessities.
In that way, he was not unlike the "radical first-century hippy" upon whom the church's teachings are based.
Moss' life, she said, was a reminder: "The way we treat and care for (those with) the least of means, for those for whom society no longer values or protects, that how we treat people is a reflection of our understanding of God."
