ENGLEWOOD -- Perry Walter died where he lived -- under a tin-and-timber shelter at Indian Mound Park.

He was found on a cement slab below a picnic table just after dawn on June 1.

His green-and-black Ozark Trail shirt, lime-green pillow, and flattened pack of Union cigarettes lay nearby.

Stacked neatly against a garbage can were three empty Natural Ice 12-pack boxes.

The Sarasota County Sheriff's Office didn't confirm until three days later who the dead man was, but those who knew Perry Walter knew it was he.

And those who knew him also knew what killed him.

"Perry was the perfect alcoholic," Philip Spearman said. "He drank until he died."

Spearman met Walter on May 2, 1999. He remembers because it was the first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting Spearman attended at the park.

"Perry came almost every day" to the AA meetings, he said. "Everybody knew him."

But they couldn't help him.

"We didn't feel sympathy for him, but there was great empathy," Spearman said. "The pain and horror he suffered daily, no one would wish on their worst enemy. Myself and others know what Perry felt daily."

Free spirit

Perry Mason Walter was born on June 19, 1950, in Ohio.

In 1959, he moved with his family to Englewood. His parents owned Dairy Mart on Old Englewood Road until the early 1970s, according to his sister, Karen Guernsey.

"Even as a kid, he was a free spirit," she said. "If there was something that needed to be done at the store, he'd hop on his bike and be gone."

Walter quit school in ninth grade, starting a life-long drift. He was a handyman, doing "mechanical types of things -- tire repair, lawn mowers, that line of work," Guernsey said.

He married and had two daughters, but she knows little about what became of them.

Guernsey claimed Walter's body and handled his funeral arrangements -- cremation and internment in the family's Gulf Pines Cemetery plot.

"My mother passed away three years ago," she said. "He's with her."

In a strange way, Walter died on his own terms, Spearman said.

"He wasn't homeless. The park was his home," he said. "He died at home on his bed. His bed happened to be a park bench."

"He was really where he wanted to be," Guernsey said. "He loved that park. That park was his home."

"I thank God his spirit is free at last," Spearman said. "They found the body, but not Perry's spirit."

Mike, 42, is a "mariner" from South Carolina. He does "sign work" to finance repairs to a 27-foot Columbia sailboat moored near Tom Adams Bridge. He hopes to sail to Corpus Christi, Texas.

When he doesn't sleep on his sailboat, Mike stays in the park, drinking with friends.

Four days after Walter died, Mike was sipping lukewarm Busch beer from a can in the park's pavilion.

"Last names don't get tossed around here," Mike said. "You never know what trouble is coming down the road. You don't want people knowing too much about you.

"When you're on the streets," he continued, "you take everything in. You give nothing away."

He said Indian Mound Park's benign beauty is deceptive.

"When it gets dark, things happen here," he said. "This place has a secret life."

It can be a dangerous life, too.

"Meth heads and crackheads come through here," Mike said. "They are a messed-up bunch."

He protected Walter from younger, violent park denizens.

"Old guys like him were no threat to anyone. There's a bunch of old guys Perry hung out with. They were like a gang," Mike said. "They looked out for each other."

He said Walter didn't reveal much about his past.

"He stayed away from his family," Mike said. "He didn't want to be a burden to anyone."

Walter lived by panhandling, he said, spending whatever he scrounged on beer and cigarettes.

"Guys like us fed him," Mike said. "I bought him sandwiches -- not because I felt sorry for him but, because, there for the grace of God ... compassion."

Walter was in alcohol rehabilitation for about 50 days until early May, he said.

During the forced sobriety, he received a dire medical prognosis.

"I guess they told him he was a goner. His liver was giving out, he had Hepatitis C and he wasn't going to take care of himself," Mike said. "But he had a good attitude about it. He was happy to be getting away from all this."

Over the last few weeks, he said, discussions with Walter were "spiritual," with an emphasis on life after death.

Mike will miss Walter.

"If you caught him when he was sober, he said things that made you think," he said. "He was a good human being."

Mike doubts anyone else will miss Walter.

"Most small people," he said, "we go unmissed every day."

In addition to being a longtime AA regular, Walter was well-known at the Englewood Bible Church.

Guernsey said her brother helped out at the church's food pantry, carrying bags of canned foods for senior citizens.

"He was a very caring person; always willing to help someone," she said.

Church elder Jim McCarron said he met Walter eight years ago.

"I got to know him pretty well," he said. "Everybody seemed to like him. Most everybody helped him out."

McCarron said over the years, church members and others convinced Walter to go into rehabilitation at Sarasota First Step.

"One time, he spent two weeks and he came out like a new person, but he got back with his friends," he said.

Walter didn't reveal much about himself, but McCarron detected an inner struggle.

"A lot of people picked on him. He was kind of a fighter," he said. "I think he had some anger in him."

McCarron wasn't surprised to hear Walter was dead.

"We'd get reports and rumors, 'Well, they found Perry dead somewhere,'" he said. "Everybody kind of suspected it was him."

McCarron officiated a June 13 memorial for Walter at Indian Mound Park. About 75 people attended.

"We believe," he said, "through the church, that he was a born-again Christian."

"Perry was a blessing to newcomers" at AA meetings, he said.

"We'd point to Perry and say, 'That is exactly what will happen to you if you don't stop drinking,'" Spearman said.

But some cannot stop, he said.

"He was one of the people God didn't want to get sober. Nobody could get Perry sober," Spearman said. "Even doctors are baffled by why people drink themselves to death."

"I think Perry was one of those people," McCarron said. "That is why he liked being alone -- that way, he didn't get hurt."

In the end, Guernsey said, her brother knew no other way to live.

"It was his lifestyle," Guernsey said. "The drinking, you know, it's a killer. Not only in body, but in mind and soul. It destroys peoples' lives until they are in too deep.

"He felt like, as the years went by, he couldn't change," she continued. "He knew the road he was going down, but he wasn't going to change."

Four days after he was found dead under the shelter, Walter's shirt and pillow remained on the picnic table.

Mike wished these meager possessions -- all Walter owned in the world -- could remain forever where they were.

"I don't know what broke him in life. I guess we all get broken," Mike said. "You get broken and then you get old and tired."

On Lemon Bay, near the park, a shimmering white sailboat tacks sharply starboard. With a snap of canvas, it is gone with the wind, bound for the Gulf and beyond.

"I'm 20 years younger than him," Mike shrugged, "but I'm probably headed down the same road."

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