Return of the Guardian Angels

Victor Kerlow

Dear Diary:

Some of my earliest memories coincide with New York emerging from the 80s, that last hurrah of resilient perms and synthesizer songs. I recollect the yellows and oranges of the Coney Island-bound D train’s plastic seats, each insufficient in width, demarcated by cream-colored bands. Mixed into these sunrise shades were intermittent reds and whites: the red felt berets of the Guardian Angels, their red, satiny varsity jackets screen-printed with white celestial wings and that all-seeing eye.

As New York transformed from the inner city into simply “the” city, I noticed the Angels disappearing. The forces that made willing-and-able straphangers out of budding bankers I assumed concurrently outmoded the necessity for a citizens’ brigade.

On a still September evening along Christopher Street, I saw the Angels â€" red berets, red jackets, white wings â€" for the first time in 20 years. I was with my sister, and, excited, I blurted in a failed whisper: “They exist!”

Nearly a decade separates us in age, and through that gap fell the Guardian Angels. She had never heard of them, and, seeing them for the first time, doubted their guardianship. “They’re a bit old, no?” True â€" most looked 40 and beyond, not quite the karate choppers of repute. We conjectured that they were having a reunion; one held an iPhone in what seemed could only be Instagram ready-to-document position.

My sister and I soon parted ways; she turned east, and I dove deeper west. The following morning, she wrote to me: “That iPhone doubled as a walkie-talkie.” She had passed them again and overheard their conversation with a Midtown patrol.

That brief splash of red and white was a nostalgic nod to the New York of my youth and a testament to the city’s enduring evolution, for the Guardian Angels are still on the lookout, and they, too, have upgraded.

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Ailing ‘Mayor,’ Absent From Strawberry Fields, Still Channeling Lennon

Corey Kilgannon/The New York Times Gary dos Santos, known as the “mayor” of Strawberry Fields, at the memorial to John Lennon in Central Park.

Outside a ninth-floor room in St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital on Manhattan’s West Side last week was a handwritten sign that said “Mayor of Strawberry Fields.”

The patient in the room was Gary dos Santos, 49, who has gained renown for his presence at the “Imagine” mosaic, a memorial to John Lennon in Strawberry Fields just inside the West 72nd Street entrance to Central Park.

For the last 20 years, Mr. dos Santos has been a constant in the park, laying flowers and repeating for the steady stream of visitors his spiel about Mr. Lennon â€" “the brother” â€" who lived across the street in the Dakota apartment building and whose spirit Mr. dos Santos professes to keep alive at the memorial.

But he had been noticeably absent from his domain for several weeks. And with the approach of Mr. Lennon’s birthday (it would have been his 73rd) on Wednesday â€" a high holy day at the mosaic, with crowds gathering in his honor â€" the grim message was beginning to make the rounds among regulars: the mayor of Strawberry Fields was very sick.

Mr. dos Santos recently received a diagnosis of advanced stage leukemia and was fighting for his life at the same hospital where emergency room doctors tried to save Mr. Lennon after he was shot on Dec. 8, 1980, in front of the Dakota.

“I’m getting positive vibes from John in here,” he said.

The leukemia was found after Mr. dos Santos sought treatment for what turned out to be pneumonia. Doctors began administering high doses of chemotherapy to him last week.

“I want everyone to know: I won’t be back for John’s birthday, but I plan on being back for December 8,” Mr. dos Santos said, referring to the date of the annual memorial gathering in the park.

In Mr. dos Santos’s hospital room, instead of his trademark denim jacket bearing his hand-painted “Mayor Gary” title, he wore a blue gown. And in place of his familiar baseball hat covered with peace-themed pins, he wore a plastic head cover. On his wrist, along with his woven hippie bracelets, was a yellow hospital band with the words “Fall Risk.”

Despite the diagnosis, Mr. dos Santos was upbeat, energetic and clear-eyed. He had not had a drink since New Year’s Eve, he said, and just quit smoking cigarettes.

“They can’t believe my energy because they have me on Percocets and morphine and a bunch of other things,” he said. “I told them, ‘You call these drugs? You’re talking to a hippie. This is child’s play compared to what I’ve been through.’”

Mr. dos Santos, who was born in Queens and whose given name is Ayrton Ferreria dos Santos Jr., spent years drifting in and out of homelessness before settling a few years ago at the Times Square, a single-room-occupancy residence, on West 43rd Street.

He decided to be a regular keeper of the mosaic after, he said, Mr. Lennon visited him in a dream and told him, “Gary, keep doing what you’re doing, every day.” So, each day, he would gather castoff flowers from nearby florists and grocers, and arrange them on the mosaic.

“When the tour buses pull up, he’s there for them â€" the tour guides hand it over to Gary,” said Charles Clementz, 47, of Brooklyn, a regular at Strawberry Fields and a guitarist, as he sat next to the mosaic on Thursday. Littered with dead leaves, the memorial seemed oddly unadorned without Mr. dos Santos’s usual floral arrangements.

After his speech to tourists, Mr. dos Santos would typically ask them to “make a wish” and leave an offering or tips. He lived off those tips, Mr. dos Santos said.

Over the years, Mr. dos Santos said he had gained the praise of many celebrities visiting the mosaic, including Mr. Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, and the singer Roberta Flack, who both live in the Dakota.

“Gary’s a very kind man and he loves to decorate the shrine that Yoko put there,” Ms. Flack said in an interview on Friday. “We always speak and talk when I’m there. He cares a lot about people. There are a lot of people in the park whose hustle is not so pure â€" his is pure.”

Regarding the scores of tourists who have returned home with a memory and a photograph of Mr. dos Santos, she said, “They may not know his name, but they remember that man.”

José Feliciano, the singer and guitarist, has been known to drop by the Central Park memorial with his guitar.

“Gary’s done a wonderful job keeping up Strawberry Fields for the people of New York,” Mr. Feliciano said last week by phone. “Without Gary, the place wouldn’t be the same. I’m not counting him out, but the magnitude of him being there can never be replaced.”

Mr. Feliciano said he gave Mr. dos Santos a rosary pendant in 2008 that had been blessed by Pope Benedict XVI after he performed for the pope at Yankee Stadium that year.

At the hospital, Mr. dos Santos still wore the pendant around his neck.

“This necklace is my protection,” he said. “When I took it off, I ran a dangerously high fever. As soon as I put it back on the fever went down.”

Mr. dos Santos said he took comfort in knowing that should he not survive, his dog, Mary Jane, would be under the care of Lisa Page, his girlfriend of 15 years.

“I’m not worried because I have the brother watching over me,” he said, referring to Mr. Lennon. “But if my time is up and I didn’t get world peace, you can’t say I didn’t try my hardest, brother. You can’t say I didn’t try.”