David Ramage sits at a bus stop on the east side of North Port Washington Road in Gover Heights. Ramage, whose long, white beard and hair tangle in his hat and coat, is a registered sex offender.
Ramage was born down South but came to Milwaukee in 2000. “It’s … like they say: come on vacation, leave on probation,” he says. “I’ve just lost ten and a half years of my life in prison.”
He was arrested in 2005, convicted in 2006 and was just recently released. “I’ve been out of prison, now, for two months, just about two months.”
Ramage, who’s currently homeless, is worried about the colder temperatures that have finally come and aren’t going anywhere soon. “I’m afraid ‘a that,” he says.
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The situation is even more dire for Ramage, who’s confined to a wheelchair. “I suffer vertigo.”
The vertigo, which Ramage said started after he went to prison, is triggered randomly. “You know those little merry-go-rounds you go on as a child, and then you try to walk away and you end up falling over? I get that all the time,” he says.
“I can’t think of a better way to express it.”
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