There was a small plastic flower, a wreath, an eight-inch-high wooden cross, a commemorative coin and one shoe.

The disparate items were placed at the corner of Roxboro Street and Morehead Avenue by motorists who missed the one-legged, well-mannered man who stood there with a sign asking for change.

That man, William Ernest Davis, was stabbed to death during an argument last month, and the memorial and a 60-word story about his death were all that marked his life or death.

According to the brief story, he was found lying partly in the roadway at the intersection of West Piedmont Avenue and Scout Drive.

William Ernest Davis' life deserved more than 60 words, though. Everyone's does.

In the police report, Davis, 39, was called homeless. He wasn't, his heartbroken mother said.

"He had three or four homes here in Henderson where he could've lived," Mary Davis Malone told me this week. "That's just the life he chose."

Despite what we saw -- or, more likely, tried not to see -- when we were stopped by a red light at that corner, the one-legged man on crutches was a real human being with a loving family.

Malone described her son, who was born with one leg due to a birth defect, as "a very sweet person." After two marriages and two divorces, she said, "he went to Durham to try to get his life straightened out. Me and him were real close, but he had problems with his ex-wife."

Malone's husband, William Malone, remembered his stepson as being "very respectful. We talked man-to-man. We got along real great. I was real fond of him."

Mary Malone said she got worried when she was unable to reach her son at the Durham Rescue Mission or at another number he'd given her.

"During the week of Easter I hadn't heard from him. I got real restless. I couldn't sleep," she said.

When the roadside memorial is eventually blown away, there'll still be a reminder of sorts to Davis' life. He liked to draw, his mother said.

"There are quite a few pictures he drew on walls" throughout Vance County, she said. "There's one on a store on Garner Street."

Her first husband has many of the pictures her son drew, but hers were destroyed in a fire.

There was pride and sadness in Malone's voice as she talked about her son. Oh yeah. And love.

You see, just because someone appears to be living a throwaway life, they've not necessarily been thrown away. Sometimes inner demons and a search for ... something ... can lead someone onto the street asking strangers for change. Even when they have three or four homes at which they can stay.

Malone said, "I know it won't bring him back, but I hope they catch who did it. My son didn't deserve to die like that."

Nobody's son does.