Desperately Seeking Alex My Part In A Missing Person Search

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In 2009-2010 I helped to organize a benefit evening and booklet launch on behalf of ‘Desperately Seeking Alex’ , a support group for the family and friends of Alex Humphrey, a then 29 year old man who vanished without trace during a visit to Boquete in Panama, South America. He has not been seen anywhere since August 14th 2009. Alex was (is) a terrific performance poet, and with other fellow performers who have been lucky enough to share the stage with him in the past, I helped to organize events to raise awareness and help Alex’s family, who pushed themselves into debt having to travel several times from England to Panama to assist in the investigations there. The show took place in January 2010 at Manchester’s Green Room arts venue, where Alex (and I) played many times before its closure. Knowing Alex I can’t claim to know Alex as well as many others who will undoubtedly have dozens of great memories and anecdotes to share about him. I did meet Alex at a number of performance events, most notably the third Thursday of the month ‘Freed Up’ open-mice poetry shows at the Green Room theatre, where we were both regular attendees and performers. Alex often arrived with no prepared material and simply made up improvised work on the spot, with a great sense of mischief and fun, always eager and happy to be a part of the show. His instant performances were every bit as good and entertaining as work the other poets had laboured over and thoroughly rehearsed, and Alex did write material too – Dammed good material. Alex was the first to joke with me that I often wiggled in an amusing manner when performing. I first learned of this when he told me off for not wiggling one night. He found my wiggle as entertaining, if not more entertaining than my poetry. I found myself contriving a wiggle for a while after that and pointing it out to the audience that I was doing so. Alex undoubtedly got the joke more than most. I last met Alex by chance at a free classical concert at the Royal Exchange Theatre by the quartet, Litmus Strings. I was there as a volunteer with Not Part Of, who had organized the show for their 2009 arts festival. Alex was in the audience. He looked relaxed and happy. We chatted briefly before and after the short concert, and both agreed that it was a great show, after which we went our separate ways. I had no idea then that I might never see him again. Just over a month later, in late August, e-mails and Facebook messages were in circulation indicating that something was wrong. Alex had gone missing in Panama during a vacation he was taking there alone. We were asked to let on if we got messages from him, as Alex had / has our e-mail addresses. No contact was made. As I suspect with many, I half expected a later message saying he’d turned up safe and well and that rumours that he’d gone missing had just been a minor misunderstanding – that never happened. Alex remained missing. Immediate family and friends were plunged into a growing and terrible sense of despair and panic. International phone calls, dealings with police, embassies, expensive flights to and from South America – unanswered questions, costs, and worries just kept building up. Alex was simply gone. The trail had gone cold. Keeping matters in perspective, Alex’s disappearance is sadly just one of 1,000’s, and by that I mean adults. Some eventually come home. Others are never seen or heard from again. We all hope Alex does come home, and that DSA can host one last event, celebrating his return, with Alex as guest of honour. I’m sure he’ll be amazed if he learns how much fuss we have all been making about him. The media in the UK at the time of Alex vanishing full of headline stories about another missing person – a girl who vanished on holiday abroad (Portugal in her case) but Madeleine McCann was five years old, and she went missing over a year ago. She was almost undoubtedly the victim of a sinister abduction. Alex was nearly 30 years old. It cannot logically or legally be ruled out that his vanishing is a matter of choice. No one knows where he is or what his current state of health and well being might be. It is terribly easy to fear the worst. To his parents, he is as much a missing child as Madeleine is to the McCanns. Though there has been and continues some media attention for Alex’s situation, his story is mostly low key or unknown to many. DSA hoped from its creation to improve on that. The First DSA Meeting In October, two full months into Alex’s absence, Andy Nicholson sent a Facebook request out for volunteers willing to help with an anthology book of poetry to be produced to raise monies to assist Alex’s family cover the costs of the ongoing search for him. With the Panamanian police realistically now having to scale down the amount of time and man-power given to the search (after what seems to have been an honourable and honest commitment to the cause, including the use of helicopters). The family may now have to hire private detectives, which will cost them a lot of money. Andy also envisaged poets, singers and other performers presenting a show together, to further promote awareness of Alex’s family’s needs. Andy called a planning meeting to be held at Odd Bar, in the Manchester Northern Quarter in the evening of Wednesday 28th October. Five of us were able to attend, Andy Nicholson, Catherine Parsons, Alan Gray (formerly known as Gordon Zola), Andrea Wren and myself. I had no real idea what to expect or how much I might find myself involved – wanting to help in some way was motive enough to attend. Andy summarized his hopes for a book and a concert event. Initial hopes to do everything within three weeks struck us all as being too ambitious given other commitments for many of us. – The scale of what we were getting into was becoming more apparent as we spoke – publicity, flyers, media liaison, website updates, raffles, auctions, editing, publication, illustrations, venue finding, tickets, sponsorship, etc. I felt as if I was involved in Live Aid. Our first task was to name the project. I thought of calling it after a popular film or book title, and my first suggestion was Finding Alex – a pun on Finding Nemo. We ran through a few other titles and when Andrea hit on the Madonna film, Desperately Seeking Susan and turned it into Desperately Seeking Alex, our challenge had a set identity. We all agreed right away that the title was right for us. Our primary aims were the development & launch of the book, and organizing the concert. The book is safely in Andy’s hands, with a call for submissions already attracting entries from across the poetry community. The submissions were read and selected by Andy and Jack (Andrea’s partner). I got a poem in the booklet. An introductory forward presented a brief summary of the story of Alex’s disappearance and it closes with an acknowledgment of the people who offered us sponsorship, raffle prizes, etc. The sad part is that not every author or piece submitted could be accepted. Similarly, with the show, many people we know to be fantastic poets would not get to go on stage – Though a few performers particularly close to Alex gained some priority, and a few musicians, most open-mic names were drawn from a hat to ensure fair opportunity for all. If demand is very high, future gigs for and by DSA may be organized. At my suggestion, burlesque performers and a magician were also invited to perform, and everyone gave their time for free. A huge thanks to everyone involved. I approached various folk for raffle prizes, quickly gaining us a meal for two at the Sweet Mandarin Chinese Restaurant and four tickets to a Slippery Belle burlesque show. Raffle prizes were wrapped in blank envelopes, and boxes, so that winning ticket holders then have pot luck as to which prize they get. This was an approach used successfully at an Ugly Tree magazine poetry event in 2009.. I got us signed copies of books by leading writers, some art work by local artists, and other donated goodies too. The show was a huge success, but sadly Alex Humphrey was never found. We may never know the truth of what became of him. Arthur Chappell