Peter Joseph Bis (c. 1951 - August 16, 2012) was a homeless man in Washington, D.C., known by the Capitol Hill community for his social personality and keen, savant-like memory. His usual daytime location was the corner of Second Street and Massachusetts Avenue NE, sitting on a crate under a tree outside an Exxon station by Washington Union Station.
According to his brother, James Bis, Bis suffered from schizophrenia. He would greet and converse with passers-by, often offering repetitive, random advice, such as "No skinny dipping!" or pointing out the number of days until the weekend. He never drank alcohol or used drugs, but did smoke cigarettes and drink coffee. He took pride in his neighborhood, spent his days saying hello to the regulars who passed him on the sidewalk, and was provided with food and clothes by the local community. He was even given an apartment at one point, but was eventually evicted because his hoarding tendencies filled up his residence. He would usually sleep in the garage of the Exxon station, and the Exxon workers would let him use a computer in the office.
Early life and education
Little is known about Bis’s childhood or pre-college years. He grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, near Western Michigan University, the son of two teachers. According to his younger brother James, Peter Bis attended Monsignor John R. Hackett High School, where he graduated in 1969, and then Western Michigan University, where he graduated in 1974 with a bachelor’s degree in history. He attended Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing, Michigan for a year, then worked as a hotel night clerk, then started a car painting company. He was unable to stick with these plans, however, and eventually started wandering the country as a result of his developing schizophrenia.
Mental health and personal traits
Schizophrenia
James Bis reported that the illness first appeared in Peter Bis’s adult years. Peter started frequently wearing a lead-lined baseball cap with red lights. The schizophrenia was eventually diagnosed, and his family petitioned that he be committed for treatment. After only a few months of in-patient treatment, however, Bis began wandering the country. Though he was never known to have purposefully hitchhiked, he would accept rides from drivers. James Bis described his brother as "a harmless kind of schizophrenic" who avoided getting help for his illness.
Bis’s schizophrenia often made it difficult for listeners to figure out what was accurate in his stories of his past. He claimed that he had received the equivalent of five or six doctorates, that he had studied in the Vatican, that he had been married and divorced, and that he once had a job as a cab driver in Michigan. While at least some of his claims were ungrounded, they endeared Bis to the community, since they could never fully figure out his true background.
Profound memory
The people of the local community frequently knew him for his keen memory. After his death, personal blogs and Washington, D.C. published articles in memory of him, specifically mentioning his uncanny memory. Washington, D.C. journalist and professor, Terry Mattingly, an Orthodox Christian, referenced a conversation with Bis in which Bis wished him a happy Easter. After Mattingly had gone a few steps, Bis stopped him and recalled that the Orthodox Easter was not until a week later. "He was right, of course. Had I shared that personal detail with him or did he glean that tidbit of liturgical minutia from one of the newspapers he read, day after day? Anyone who knew him could describe similar mysterious encounters", Mattingly wrote in his October 1, 2012 E. W. Scripps Company column.
Conspiracy theories
Besides his sharp memory, Bis was also known by the community for his conspiracy theories, which he delved into on his personal blog, which according to the title, focused on "Vatican, finances, mafia, Kalamazoo." The blog was written in third person and was one long post, which Bis added to routinely. The blog may have actually been written for him by another person, according to one source, but the identity of the person is unknown, apart from a theory that the blog’s dictation "to a friend" may have been the blog’s scribe. Bis reportedly believed he was an alien, and was especially known for his claim that he was Princess Diana’s ex-lover, and that the Central Intelligence Agency was responsible for her death. He preferred not to refer to himself as homeless, preferring to describe himself as a "political refugee".