Horace Elmore heard about Real Change from his brother, Larry, who is still a vendor. That was when the paper had its office in Belltown. “I was one of the early ones. I’ve been a vendor ever since. I had another brother selling Real Change, but he passed away.”
The Elmore brothers came to Seattle from Dallas. Before that, their father was a farmworker. “We grew up on a plantation in Bryan, Texas.” Horace picked corn and cotton on the farm. “That was a lot of fun, to tell you the truth. It was a big family — 11, by my mom, and then my dad had three more kids.”
Horace’s mother died when she was 56, but his father only recently passed, at age 92. “Most of my people are still there.”
“I came up here in 1976. I was young. Just out of school. My brother brought me up to visit, and I liked it a whole lot.” He found the people very different from those in Dallas. “Some pretty nice people, some people that ain’t so nice. I hang with the best of them, miss the rest of them.”
Horace found jobs in cleaning and doing construction and warehouse work. He got married “right away” and bought a house on Judkins Street in the Central District. “We had five kids — three boys and two girls. My oldest daughter is 43 and my oldest son, he’s 42. My youngest son, he just turned mid-30s. They’re all grown up now, thank God.”
Later on he became homeless. “My wife died of breast cancer. By that time we had separated. My daughter lost the house. The house is still there, though. They said they’re going to put it up for auction.” Horace says he’d love to get it back.
At that point, “Real Change helped me out a lot, gave me incentive to want to do more.” He moved to Rainier Valley “when I got on my feet.”
When he’s not selling Real Change, Horace likes to play with his grandchildren. “I’ve got around 30 grandkids. The majority of them are living in the area from here to Renton.” He’s looking forward to his birthday in July. “I’ll be 60 years old.” That means he can get a senior discount on his fishing license.
For years, his family has been going fishing and camping every summer on the Snake River in Eastern Washington. This summer a 12-year-old granddaughter is coming from North Carolina to spend the summer and help keep up the tradition.
Horace sells in West Seattle most of the time, at the Safeway off 42nd and Alaska. “I originally started there, matter of fact.” He talks to customers about the paper: “It’s a good newspaper. You got to read about it.” He reads it, too. “I want to know what’s going on.”
When asked if he has a message to the readers, he simply said: “Buy Real Change!”