Care-worn and forlorn, dilapidated Windsor Park was once again in the news after bureaucrats made another unsuccessful attempt to help its hapless residents whose humble houses were coming apart at the seams.

It was 1994.

Seeking comment from some of the North Las Vegas homeowners, I walked down Michale Avenue on a crumbling sidewalk past ramshackle properties I’d watched wither and fade for several years. Some were boarded up, others stubbed at their fractured foundations. In a booming Las Vegas Valley, Windsor Park was a ‘60s-era housing development that appeared time had forgotten.

The cause of the structural trouble, residents were told, was ground subsidence, but that didn’t explain the years of delays, deception and unkept promises they endured. That, they strongly suspected, had something to do with the fact Windsor Park was a predominantly Black neighborhood in a section of the valley almost bereft of political power. The late lawmaker Joe Neal, Nevada’s first Black state senator, tried for many years to gather legislative support for the neighbors, but the treatment Windsor Park’s residents received was anything but royal.

I was reminded of that trip down Michale Avenue after this week’s news that veto-happy Gov. Joe Lombardo had decided to sign Senate Bill 450, which sought millions to relocate families that have been living in homes literally sinking under their feet.

The law, four years in the making and fittingly sponsored by Neal’s daughter State Sen. Dina Neal (D-North Las Vegas), takes effect July 1. It makes available $25 million in federal pandemic relief funds and $12 million and state housing division funds and tax set asides to pay for land, construction and relocation costs for changes that have been needed for decades. There’s even money earmarked for restitution to be paid to original homeowners, such as they exist, after they accepted a buyout from the City of North Las Vegas and ended up trading one troubled street for another.

Perhaps now residents of the long-suffering neighborhood will receive the respect and assistance they’ve been denied for so long. It’s important, I think, to remember that they weren’t just victims of faulty foundations and construction defect. They were people with families, lives and unique stories.

Here is one.

Nearly 30 years ago, I walked down Michale until I reached a house whose front yard was accented by blooming rose bushes whose hues made it appear in Technicolor on that chilly November morning, especially compared to most of its neighbors.

Her name was Fletcher Brown, and meeting her that day changed my life.

Her home stood alone between vacant lots where houses had once been and next-door neighbors had once greeted her. It was as if bombs had dropped all around her. On the day I met her, she had been a Windsor resident for 17 years and had no intention of leaving.

Not her home, and certainly not without Kenny.

A nurse, volunteer and devoted parishioner at St. James the Apostle Catholic Church, then located on H Street, Fletcher had been raised in a Bahamian orphanage. Her ebullient personality was like the roses in her yard, seemingly forever in bloom.

When she learned through a friend at the county hospital that an indigent and medically fragile man there needed a place to stay, but only for a few days, she stepped up and said there was room at her house on Michale Avenue. That’s how Kenny came to live with her.

She smiled remembering the words of her friend: “Take him for a few days. Give him a little love and care.” She inherited a disheveled old fellow sitting in a broken wheelchair, his face hidden by a long gray beard. He had no shoes.

That seemingly ancient soul was white. Fletcher was Black.

After a haircut and thorough scrubbing, she discovered to her surprise that he wasn’t elderly at all. “He was a young man,” she explained, the surprise still fluttering in her voice after many years. “For some reason, I thought he was going to be a black man. When I came to pick him up, I was surprised. It took a little getting used to.”

But by then she felt it was too late to just return him to the hospital. She made room for the stranger in her small house in one of the worst neighborhoods in Southern Nevada.

And he thrived thanks to her charitable sacrifice.

In a quiet moment, she thought of her own small life and how she had somehow managed to go from an orphanage far away to a house in Windsor Park.

“My mother left me when I was born,” she said. “I know how it feels to be alone and you need somebody. If you were brought up in that way, you’d know how it feels not to be wanted. Kenny keeps me active. He’s happy and I’m happy.”

Despite the man’s increasing medical maladies and worsening condition, Fletcher Brown never left his side.

Good people are where you find them. They deserve respect.

Fletcher Brown is gone now, but I’ll always remember her as royalty in Windsor Park.

John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his family’s Nevada roots go back to 1881. His stories have appeared in Time, Readers Digest, The Daily Beast, Reuters, Ruralite and Desert Companion, among others. He also offers weekly commentary on Nevada Public Radio station KNPR.