By Edward J. Boyer – Jan. 4, 1999

It started with pieces of scrap lumber. Richard ‘‘5th Street Dick’’ Fulton had helped build the small theater in what was then Marla Gibbs’ Vision Complex in Leimert Park. With scraps left over from that job, he went to work on his own vision–one that would bring a jazz and poetry venue to the burgeoning arts community.

When he was finished, he opened 5th Street Dick’s Coffee Co. From the day it opened in 1992, coffee-house habitués knew there was no other like it in town.

‘‘You could go to 5th Street Dick’s at 2 a.m. and see Japanese tourists catching a jazz set inside, and outside see white chess players peeking over the shoulders of black chess players,’’ said poet Kamau Daaood, a seminal figure in the Leimert Park arts movement. ‘‘Richard’s coffee house dispels myths about our community. Richard has given us a vision.’’

Fulton frequently talked about his dream of opening the coffee house/jazz club. He has also talked about how he spent years in an alcoholic haze, descending in a constant spiral that saw him homeless on Skid Row-–hanging out at 5th Street and Towne downtown.

Here is a guy who took the lemon life had dealt him and made more than lemonade. He made a magnificent soufflé. Rather than be embarrassed by his days on 5th Street–‘‘The Nickle,’’ in the parlance of Skid Row denizens–he wears the name 5th Street like a badge of courage. And Richard Fulton is a courageous man.

For more than three years, he had to panhandle to even be able to buy a cup of coffee.

‘‘All I could do was watch the life spill out of me,’’ Dick once said. ‘‘When you’re down like I was, you die on a daily basis. I aspired to absolutely nothing.’’

A native of Pittsburgh, Fulton arrived in Los Angeles in 1975 after military service that included duty in Vietnam. He had not been in town long before what had been a drinking problem became a full-blown crisis. By 1978 he had hit absolute bottom. And that’s when things started looking up.

An Alcoholics Anonymous recovery wagon picked him up, and people in the program slowly gave him back his ability to love.

‘‘I mean I was raggedy, smelly, funky–but they loved me back into existence,’’ Fulton once told the Times.

In Fulton, ‘‘you see a man’s growth and development, a man who has struggled with his life,’’ said Daaood. ‘‘He took the scars and turned them into stars.’’

Fulton’s coffee house is a Leimert Park landmark. If the music does not draw you there, the chess players at tables outside might. Inside is for listening to music. Outside is for talking trash over chess and catching up with friends. Trying to talk inside is futile, unless you’re a lip reader.

‘‘Can’t turn down the music, Ed,’’ he said. I was almost embarrassed for having asked. I should have known better.

I remember once asking Dick if he could turn down the volume on the recorded music that was playing. It was about as cold as it gets in Los Angeles, and only the hardiest of souls wanted to sit outside.

Dick just smiled. ‘‘Can’t turn down the music, Ed,’’ he said. I was almost embarrassed for having asked. I should have known better. That music in one sense reflected the intricate riffs and soaring solos that had come to characterise his life.

And his coffee company.

‘‘It is a feel-good area,’’ says Laura Hendricks, who owns Gallery Plus in Leimert Park. ‘‘Musicians can come and play. Poets and comedians can perform. People can play chess, checkers or just mix without having to dress up. They can get out of their chairs at home and come over here to a healing space. That’s what he has provided for Leimert Park.’’

Now Leimert Park is giving something back to Dick. By the time this appears Friday, the merchants there will already have hosted a benefit for Dick on Degnan Boulevard Thursday. We announced it in this section last week.

Earlier this year, Fulton was diagnosed with cancer that affects his throat and face. Doctors are not optimistic, especially since Dick has so far chosen not to undergo radiation or chemotherapy.

Earlier this week, Dick was outside his coffee house on 43rd Place, watching some regulars play chess.

Hendricks calls Dick a true community activist, a man who was at the center of hot issues affecting Leimert Park–from controversial parking meters to critiques of what he saw as improper police conduct.

Beneath the activist, the guy who pulled himself up from the mean streets of Skid Row, is a man with ‘‘a very, very sweet heart,’’ says Daaood. ‘‘He has a lot of love.’’ ◼︎

Fulton, 56, lost his long battle with throat cancer in March 2000. As he lay dying that morning with trumpeter Lee Morgan’s music playing in his room, he declined a morphine shot. Daaood said he instead wrote nurses a note, saying: “Turn the music up.”