People just like Buddy.

He lived in a furnished studio apartment with piles everywhere — newspaper, towels, clothes. But in the middle of the room was a CD player. And always it played music. Jazz music.

His constellation of friends from UNCG created a loose-knit web of care. They visited Buddy and brought him blankets and linens, pots and pans and clothes and shoes and CDs. Lots of CDs.

Every Monday, Houghton took Buddy for hotdogs. Chad Eby, a UNCG jazz professor, took Buddy to Thanksgiving at his home. Buddy came in a green suit and regaled Eby's young children, Spenser and Mira, with tales of Miles.

“How's Buddy doing?’’ Spenser often asked his dad.

After July 2009, Eby didn't give Spenser many specifics. Buddy had suffered a stroke.

Today, Buddy lies in a single bed at the Golden Living Center, a skilled nursing facility in Greensboro, surrounded by posters that remind him of the people he knew when he was the King of New York.

He's 85, a shell of his former suit-and-tie self. He wears a flimsy hospital gown, he can't walk and he sleeps a lot. When he's awake and recognizes somebody he knows, he shakes and talks in a mumble.

That is, if he talks at all.

He lost his dentures when his stroke knocked him down. And he can't get a new set because he can't swallow safely without choking. So, he's fed through a tube in his stomach and has no teeth.

But as he lays there, his friends from UNCG come. Students, alumni, professors and jazz fans. They come to talk, to play, to sit beside his bed and hold his hand.

One of his frequent visitors is UNCG music professor John Salmon.

“I want John to take care of my business,” Buddy told Golden Living's social worker.

Salmon did. In October, in a hearing in downtown Greensboro courthouse, Salmon — a 55-year-old father of two — became Buddy's legal guardian.

Salmon grew up in segregated Texas, a privileged white boy whose mother told him he couldn't drink at the Negro water fountain because she told him the water wasn't “clean.”

And now, decades later, Salmon is taking care of an elderly indigent black man.

He needed to. All he had to do was think of The Horn.

“I'm hunched over with this feeling of great responsibility,” Salmon told me last fall. “But compared to the incredible generosity of this man — and the beacon of light that trumpet is and an inspiration to our students — my contribution is miniscule.”

Salmon admits he shoulders some guilt. Buddy never wanted anything for The Horn. Miles gave it to him in the late 1960s. And 30 years later, Buddy gave it to UNCG.

No money. Nothing. Even if it was an instrument valued at $1.6 million. Miles would've wanted it that way.

“No, man,” Buddy told everybody who asked. “Miles wanted me to give it for students' inspiration.”

Still, that response always bothered Salmon.

“Especially when his indigent condition became apparent,” he told me. “If I had known back then when he gave the trumpet that his own finances were not in the best of shape I might have tried to persuade him otherwise. But no one had any idea.”

I wrote about that last fall for the News & Record. About how Salmon, Haines and others had come to the aid of a toothless black man who gave so much and asked for so little.

After my column ran, the calls came. To Salmon. To Haines. And to me.

People wanted to help, donate money and visit. And they told more stories about the young, energetic Buddy, the NC A&T State grad who left Greensboro in late 1940s and ventured to New York to find a life.

These stories are just fascinating.

Take this one from Cameron Falkener, 58, a sales representative for a medical sales and dental supply company. Buddy knew him by another name: Cam.

“He had this convertible when he came into town, and he would say, ‘Cam, let's go for a ride,’ and me, being an impressionable young kid, 8 or 9 years old, I knew I was going to jump into this convertible, man.

“I hadn't seen anything like this, and we'd go around town, and everyone was waving and stopping him like he was the mayor.

“And we'd come by Bennett College — you could drive through campus back then — and he was in his late 20s, and all these girls would run up and purr over this nice car.

“They would say, ‘Ooooo, who's this cute little boy, and Buddy, he would just smile like a Cheshire cat.”

Or this one from Ozro Thaddeus Wells, 78, an attorney in New York City.

Wells talks of 1956, a time when Buddy was selling cars and staying at Hotel Teresa, an epicenter of black culture where he once worked as a waiter.

Buddy told Wells, a young lawyer from Greensboro, to come to New York.

“You can go to Paris and be the best lawyer in France,” Buddy told Wells, “but if you come to New York, you'd be the best lawyer in the world, man.”

In New York, Buddy was what Wells called the “bon vivant” of the scene. In the early 1950s, after arriving from Greensboro, Buddy walked up to Miles at the famous jazz club Birdland and introduced himself. They became fast friends.

So, when Wells came to New York, Buddy introduced Wells to Miles.

“He took me over to Miles' house and said, ‘This is my man. If you need a lawyer, he's your man,’ and after that, I would get calls from Miles at 3 or 4 in the morning.

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Friends and family make a point to visit Buddy Gist in his room at Golden Living. Here, 8-year-old Spenser Eby, along with dad Chad Eby and bass player Gray Hackelman, fill Gist’s room with jazz.

“He'd be in jail for something like disorderly conduct, and he'd tell me, ‘Man, these (expletives) have got me down in jail,’” Wells said, laughing. “Miles was a genius, but he had no diplomacy. But that was so typical of Buddy. He knew everybody.

On a Sunday before Christmas, Wells came down from New York to visit family in Greensboro and see Buddy at the Golden Living Center. He sat beside Buddy's bed and said loudly, “Arthur Taswell Gist, it's O.T. Wells from New York.”

Buddy didn't wake up.

Buddy receives drugs to help with his anxiety and depression. Meanwhile, certified nursing assistants who tend to him at Golden Living say he seems to be deteriorating.

He's nearly destitute, with his stay at Golden Living covered by Medicaid. But he's far from poor. Stand in his room on any given day, and his friends continue to come. His far-flung family members do, too.

His distant cousin from Spartanburg, S.C. His stepdaughter from Los Angeles. His son from Atlanta. They all hadn't seen him in decades.

“This frail, frail man is loved by so many people,” Houghton said. “He believes in kindness, that unconditional love, and that's what makes him a spectacular person.

“I would like to see him given credit for who he is rather than who he knew. He's Buddy, one of the nicest guys.”

Spenser Eby, Chad Eby's trumpet-playing second-grade son, now knows where Buddy is. After my column ran in October, Chad and Spenser, father and son, talked about life and death.

“Buddy is in a hospital, but it's a hospital where he has to stay,” Chad Eby told his son.

“Will Buddy be there forever?” Spenser asked.

“Probably,” his father answered, “until the end of his life. Do you want to play your trumpet for Buddy? That would make him very happy.”

“Yeah, I'd love to, Dad,” Spenser responded.

He did.

Buddy Gist died April 18, 2010, at the age of 84. His friends at the School of Music planned and performed at a memorial service in the Organ Hall in his honor.

Jeri Rowe is a columnist with the News & Record.