BY AMANDA STRATFORD • FLORIDA TODAY • August 21, 2009 TITUSVILLE — Few people knew Theodore “Ted” Haag by name.
More knew the elderly man — wearing a floppy beige hat and often walking along U.S. 1 — as “Gilligan Man” or “The Man from the Woods.” But to Port St. John resident Mary Moore, he was the “The Miracle Man.” In the few months she knew him, Moore said he changed her life through his perseverance and goodwill. Moore plans a memorial Saturday for Haag, a homeless World War II veteran who died of esophageal cancer in June at age 87. “He didn’t realize it, but he was just as much a blessing to me as he thought I was to him,” said Moore, 65, who volunteers with the local chapter of National Veterans Homeless Support Inc. Their short friendship began in January when she saw him pass out and fall into a ditch along U.S. 1. She called an ambulance, then visited him in the hospital as he recovered.
When he was moved to a nursing home near Tampa, she drove three hours every week to visit him.