01:00 AM EST on Wednesday, November 30, 2005

For his trip to Providence last week, Brother Ed Phelan soaked his clothes in cheap wine for two days.

He also had a talk with a guy who lives in a cave beneath the Deegan Expressway.

Phelan wanted the complete homeless package -- the look, the smell, the incoherence. He didn't want to leave any doubt about the low state of his fortunes.

When he reached the sidewalk on Academy Avenue last Wednesday morning, in his pungent thermal undershirt and torn pants, he kicked the leaves and talked to an imaginary figure in the sky. And he waited to see how he would be received by the students of La Salle Academy.

He was there for an hour before going inside to be the guest speaker at the school's Thanksgiving prayer service. He had come up from the Highbridge Community Life Center, which is located in the shadow of Yankee Stadium and provides basic adult education.

Phelan sees a lot of homeless people in his work. He knows there are huge differences in the ways they choose to live their uncertain lives. But he wanted to make sure that the students at La Salle would see him and come to only one possible conclusion.

He has friends at the school in Providence. When they invited him up for the Thanksgiving service, a brother he works with suggested he go undercover on the way in.

He drew on his experience on the streets of the South Bronx and what the guy beneath the expressway told him. He bought some wine that didn't have a cork in it.

He was, apparently, very convincing.

"The smell was awful," said Beth Haidemenos, a senior.

"He was believable," said Kathleen Arnold, also a senior.

They encountered this rough-cut Christian Brother from the South Bronx at a time when they are trying to get closer to a problem that does not usually show up on the way to school in the morning.

"We wanted the kids to have as personal an experience as possible," said Maryann Donohue-Lynch, the director of campus ministries.

On Nov. 10, the students had a "sleep-out" complete with the kind of surprises the homeless know too well. They were just setting up their tents near the football field when they were evicted, told to move on by an angry landlord on loan from the La Salle faculty. They were moved to a shelter, a building on campus, where there wasn't enough food for everybody. They tried to follow the sad path of some homeless people who had been evicted from their makeshift shelters in Providence a few days before.

In January, La Salle students will study legislation before the Rhode Island legislature that deals with the homeless. They will write letters, become advocates.

And among their homeless lessons will be the videotape, shot by a faculty member who was in on the whole thing, that shows what happened when Brother Ed Phelan showed up at La Salle in his wine-soaked duds.

It shows a woman who, after dropping off her child, gets out of her car, takes off her scarf and wraps it gently around Phelan's neck. He is trying to find out who she is. He says she almost made him cry.

The tape also shows sophomore Ali Lomazzo giving Phelan her La Salle sweatshirt. Other students gave him gloves, a shirt, a hat.

It was girls who came forward. Everyone was civil, he said. But it was girls who responded.

"It made me feel grateful for what I have," said Kathleen Arnold. "We're kind of sheltered here."

Bob Kerr can be reached by e-mail at bkerr@projo.com.