Harvard Grad Prepares To Leave Home on the Street

Yesterday was a busy day for Agatha Okyere ’81. She was moving—packing her belongings into boxes and bags, fumbling beneath the blue tarp that guards her property.

“I am very busy today,” she says, eyeing the clock on the Cambridge Savings Bank. “I have to pack these things, and then I must run errands.”

She speaks lucidly, although sometimes her soft voice is muffled by the pink scarf that envelops her head. Her eyes survey her surroundings as she rests her hand lightly on a box.

Although she sometimes refers to herself as “Lady Richlove,” most people know Okyere simply as Agatha. Despite the fact that thousands pass by her home for recent months—the area outside Holyoke Gate—she has remained a mystery during her time here.

Today, her constant presence opposite the Porcellian Club and the Yenching Restaurant might end.

Agatha is busy because, if everything goes according to plan, she will be moving off the street today for the first time in more than a year, completing a cycle that began more than two decades ago when she arrived for her freshman year at Harvard in 1977.

From Ghana to Cambridge

Nana Adwoa Tiwaah “Agatha” Okyere was born on December 12, 1957 in Kumasi, Ghana, according to her class records. She says she has three younger brothers and an older sister. Of her parents, she hints only at a guardian living in Ghana.

Agatha is Ashanti, a member of one of the region’s largest ethnic groups. She attended Asanteman Secondary School and lived in West Africa until matriculating at Harvard in the fall of 1977, according to the records.

When she arrived to start school here, she had never before been to the United States.

Her brief statement in the Class of 1981 Yearbook presents a picture of a young woman with a hopeful smile and an immaculate suit. She lived in Currier House and graduated with a degree in Economics.

According to her yearbook, Agatha devoted much of her time to a wide array of extracurricular activities—including the Radcliffe Union of Students, the Black Students Association and the Catholic Students Association.

By all accounts, her undergraduate years were normal.

“From what I know, she was a fine student,” says S. Allen Counter, director of the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations, who has been instrumental in finding Agatha housing.

After graduation, Agatha’s contact with Harvard over the last two decades stemmed largely from the alumni class reports published every five years.

In the alumni reports, each class member is asked to submit a statement updating former classmates on their current lives.

Agatha’s show a woman on the move—professionally and personally successful. It seems, though, that sometime in the intervening years, her mental health began to falter.

In her five-year report, submitted in 1986, Agatha writes that she had received her masters degree from Cambridge University in England while working under a “renowned economist.” She then says she transferred to Oxford to pursue a Doctorate in Philosophy.

She expresses pride at her achievements—especially as an Ashanti woman.

“It was very unusual for me, because of my culture, to attend Harvard, Cambridge and Oxford consecutively,” she writes.

Agatha then mentions that she left her doctoral program at Oxford to immerse herself in the world of consulting.

For this report in 1986, she cites her position as an “International Economist” with Goldman Sachs, a New York-based investment firm.

Goldman, however, was unable to locate any records of employment under her name, according to a company spokesperson.

Five years later, in her 10-year alumni report, Agatha states that she is working as a financial consultant for TDC Incorporated, a company in Los Angeles.

The phone number that she listed as her work number is now disconnected.

She goes on to state that she had worked at Chase Manhattan Bank for two years.

Chase Manhattan, now a subsidiary of JPMorgan Chase, does have a record of her working there for a 10-day period in February 1987 as a “Senior Control Clerk.” No job description was available.

In this same 10-year report, though, where she describes her successful life, there are signs of possible problems and strange contradictions.

At one point, she appeals to her fellow alumni for information on jobs in New York and Los Angeles, asking them to send any information to her address in Ghana.

There are signs that she is searching for romantic involvement as well. She mentions that she is single, but looking for a relationship.

“Anyone with something to add on that last bit of information can contact me at my Ghana address,” she writes.

After two reports focusing on her professional life, her 15-year class report instead focuses on newfound joy in her personal life: Agatha informs her classmates of the birth of a baby daughter, Jasmine, in March 1991.

“Nothing that I have ever experienced nor have ever imagined compares with the awesome, terrifying and wonderful moments surrounding my giving birth and my becoming a mother,” she writes.

During an interview yesterday, she proudly displayed photos of her daughter, who she says is currently living in the care of her cousins in Ghana.

Although at one point during the interview she said her husband was a doctor, at other times she maintained she had always been single. There is no sign of any spouse in the photographs or in her alumni reports.

But her 15-year report also hints that the preceding five years have not been entirely joyful and easy.

“The past five years have been very good overall. They have brought with them some hard times though, which I think have made me stronger,” she writes.

Agatha claims in her 15-year report to have left the security of a large company to form her own consulting firm, Nato Libby & Associates, in 1994.

She includes a contact number for this firm in her statement, but the number now reaches the receptionist of the Harvard Club of New York.

A web search for the name of her firm, which also spells her initials, turned up nothing.

Her 20-year report was published in the spring of last year.

While a number of sources place Agatha in Cambridge and living on the street at this time, she says in her statement that she is still the president and CEO of Nato Libby & Associates, still based in New York.

She reflects happily on life with her daughter Jasmine, and states that she is “deeply involved” in church life in Kumasi, Ghana.

During an interview yesterday, she explained that she had gone back to Ghana in early spring last year to celebrate her daughter’s 10th birthday.

The photo she pulls from among her things shows a smiling Agatha surrounding by younger girls whom she says are her nieces. Another photo shows her daughter, who bears some resemblance to Agatha, standing in a white dress before a birthday cake with 10 candles.

Just a month after she says she was home in Ghana, however, Agatha was first arrested by the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD)—the first of several such encounters over the last two years.

Coming Home to Harvard

When Agatha arrived at Harvard is a matter of some debate—while the police and social services recall her presence in the Square at least two or three years ago, Agatha says she only arrived in June 2001 for her 20th Reunion.

“Over the past two or three years, she has had contact with several buildings across the University,” said Steven G. Catalano, an HUPD spokesperson.

Numerous libraries have reported visits from her and she has been an occasional visitor to the Office of Career Services.

Associate University Archivist Robin McElheny recalls that Agatha was a frequent visitor to the archives in Pusey Library, and that she occupied herself in the same ways as other visiting alumni—viewing class reports, requesting and paying for photocopies.

“She’s never bothered anyone here,” McElheny reports. “She would sit in here doing research. I’ve heard that she’s fallen asleep in the reading room, but she’s certainly not the first person to do that.”

For much of her time here, Agatha moved back and forth between the Science Center and Holyoke Center, spending hours a day at Au Bon Pain, blending in with the crowds around her.

However, sometime over the summer, her presence became more prominent as she settled into her current location at Holyoke Gate.

Police and others note that she never panhandles, instead keeping her own quiet routine amid the hustle and bustle near the MBTA bus stop.

Although hesitant to leave her bags behind, she often seeks refuge in nearby restaurants and the University Lutheran Church.

Harvard itself has had an awkward relationship with her since her recent return.

“I have been very much aware of the situation with Agatha and a number of other members of the administration came to me to help,” Counter says.

Counter recalls that he tracked down a Ghanaian minister living in Wellesley in an effort to get someone from the same culture to appeal to her and offer help.

University Health Services has offered assistance and the University has also tried to contact her family members—all to no avail.

Harvard has, in fact, tried numerous efforts to assist Agatha in her current situation, but through it all she has remained resolute in her determination to stay in the Square.

“It’s not the institution deliberately failing her...Harvard is not a place set up to deal with the mentally ill,” explains David P. Illingworth ’71, associate dean of the College.

“She is very strong-willed and resistant to help,” explains HUPD Sgt. Robert Kotowski, who as the department’s community policing team leader for the area has worked with several community groups to get Agatha help.

According to both Agatha and those who have offered her help, her large amount of property has been what has kept her on the streets for so long.

Few shelters have space to take her and all her possessions.

Agatha is a “hoarder,” an individual who accumulates items assiduously, eventually amassing enough to render them practically immobile, according to Len Thomas, the director of Cambridge’s Multi-Service Center.

The bags and boxes around her at the Gate, she explains, contain clothing, books, and sundry other belongings acquired over the years.

Agatha reaches into a plastic Coop bag and fishes out a sheath of photographs. With great care, she lifts each individual picture from the stack and places them, one by one, on top of a heap of clothing.

She pauses at one picture: a statuesque woman in a business suit, looking intently at the camera with mouth slightly upturned in a wry smile.

“That’s me,” she says, smiling proudly. “That’s my nice business clothing. I have so much of that. My pinstripes, my charcoal gray...”

Her voice trails off.

Apart from the soulful brown eyes, there is scarcely any resemblance between the vibrant young woman in the pictures and the woman who now stands outside the Holyoke Gate, shrunken, in her woolen coat.

To all those who have seen her in recent months, it is obvious her health is deteriorating. She has lost weight and moves less smoothly than she once did. The whites of her eyes have grown yellow, her face gaunt.

Worries about her health and the coming cold weather has precipitated revived action by the University.

“In cases like hers, when we begin to truly get worried given the weather and everything else, there is a step up in terms of response,” Thomas says.

HUPD, working with Thomas and other agencies, has arranged a place where she can store her property securely and a new shelter where, people hope, she will be able to live and seek help over the coming months—protected from the cold nights and rainy days that characterize Cambridge winters.

Even as Agatha begins another life transition—one that will bring her back under a roof for the first time in at least a year—she projects the same spirit so evident in the class reports of the last 20 years. While she packs her bags in anticipation for today’s big move, she says, “I’m an independent woman in every sense of the word.”

She says she wants to spend the winter working on her resume, possibly returning to Ghana for Christmas to see her daughter.