A once-homeless vet beats 'a terrible 20 years'

From living in his truck to commencement: A once-homeless vet beats 'a terrible 20 years'
Published: Sunday, May 22, 2011
By Glenn Coin / The Post-Standard

While his Le Moyne College classmates studied in the library, Tom Sleeth read by a camp light in the cab of his Ford Ranger.

While they were eating at dining halls, Sleeth, a Marine veteran, was pulling food from Dumpsters. While they were turning in for the night in warm beds, Sleeth was driving around Syracuse, seeking spots beyond the reach of stiff winds and police cruisers.

Today, on his 45th birthday, Sleeth will graduate from Le Moyne College with a bachelor’s degree in English. To get there, he has overcome more obstacles than many of his classmates will endure in their lifetimes. He has suffered two crippling, life-altering injuries; gone bankrupt twice; been divorced twice; lost his parents and extended family; lost his home; and lived for more than two years off the largesse of friends and in the back of his pickup truck.

Now he is on the verge of graduating, has a home in Clay, and just last month reconnected with the love of his life whom he had not seen for 20 years. He hopes to get into graduate school in Buffalo and rekindle the romance with Aimee Latone, who lives in Jamestown.

“Everything is looking really, really wonderful for the first time ever,” Sleeth said. “It’s been a terrible 20 years.”

He’s been driven, he said, by a faith in God and an inextinguishable sense of optimism and a fierce pride.

“I don’t like giving up,” he said.
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A once-homeless vet beats a terrible 20 years