Last modified: Monday, March 20, 2000 1:00 AM EST One who's been there, plans race to help the hungry BY JAMES A. MEROLLA / SUN CHRONICLE STAFF ATTLEBORO -- At 15, Jim Whelan stood on Persian rugs, sat in sitting rooms, lay by washed stone fireplaces, ran laps around nearby tracks, visited the doctors who lived next door and the lawyers across the street, with his eight brothers and sisters, a mother pregnant with her 10th, and a father who could handle none of them any more. (With photo) At 16, he was put out on the street in Milton. `` My father had a lot of kids and he couldn't afford it,'' Whelan said. `` He had been in World War II, and there were problems there. He was put in a VA hospital for treatment. Emotional problems, I guess you could say. My grandfather had been a dentist. My grandmother sold our house.'' The next-door neighbor -- Dr. Lyons -- took young Whelan in. For months, the Whelan children were scattered among various neighborhood houses. The years were 1964-65. Turbulent years. Kennedy had just been assassinated. Southern blacks seeking equality were being stunned by fire hose water, even though they couldn't sip that same water from the same fountain as the firemen. A little war in Vietnam was escalating and an Irish kid from Milton who studied to be a priest was trying to sift through `` a lot of issues of abandonment.'' Whelan's mother, still pregnant with her 10th, wanted all of her children back together again for Christmas. So she grasped the only affordable living option open to her, the projects in Hyde Park. `` From doctors and lawyers and Indian chiefs, having all the amenities, to the projects. It was really traumatic,'' recalled Whelan, who is directing the Eighth Annual Run For Humanity at LaSalette Shrine on Saturday. The Irish kid who studied at a seminary, the paper boy, the Cub Scout, the Little Leaguer, the oldest Whelan boy, the 16-year-old father figure, drifted from job to job to anything to `` make a buck.'' `` I washed dishes at Milton Academy when Humphrey Bogart's and Ted Kennedy's sons were going there,'' he said. Totally disillusioned, he skipped school. `` I had no concern about (going to) college. If someone had told me college would offer me a better life, I'd be banging down the door. No one communicated that to me.'' Young Whelan left his mother, no longer pregnant with her 10th, and the other eight, too, and moved about the country to a succession of jobs before age 21, the year he was first homeless. It would not be the last. The spiral down began during a severe snowstorm whipping through Boston's Roslindale Square. `` It was a big storm. I didn't know whether to go right or left. I was sick. I had a few cents and bought a bag of chips. They tasted like a steak dinner. I was hanging with guys who were junkies. I had a spring jacket in a snowstorm. That's all I remember.'' Spiraling toward death He fell into a junkie's flat, getting sicker and sicker. He ran out with just his pants and his wallet and passed out in the gutter, slowly being covered by the snow. The police found him throwing up blood, but they couldn't diagnose him. They took him back to his mother in the projects. Just long enough for her to see her son's blood come up again. This time, it was black. The Irish kid blew up like the balloons he remembered tying once at his sibling's birthday parties years ago. He fell into a five-day coma. A priest performed the last rites. He lost 55 pounds in 13 days. A spinal tap revealed the meningitis. `` In those days, doctors weren't sure what to do,'' Whelan said. The body healed eventually, but amnesia slowed the mind. A flash here. A face remembered there. Over time, however, the memories flooded again. Amnesia was almost welcome. `` That was a signpost. It is by the grace of God that I sit before you, talking to you. I should have been dead a thousand times over.'' The spinal fluid cleared, but the spiral began. `` Down and down. I hung with a rough crowd.'' A heroin addict stabbed him 15 to 20 times in the leg, the side and the chest. `` He was a murderer. His ambition was to be a Mafia hit man,'' Whelan said. `` I was afraid he would turn on my family, on my ma, so I hid from the guy. I contemplated even killing him. I hid at my sister's. It was a good fear. A fear I could see in front of me.'' Saturated with city life, the constant stress and temptations, Whelan found a new life in Lester, living around farms and cows and running a lounge for a friend. `` I had it made,'' he added. But demons fear neither urban nor country life -- nor even a good bartender like Jim Whelan -- and they followed. Bar after bar, libations made. Libations served, customer after customer. Served again and, for distraction, joined. The demons never left and, finally, they won. The scenes shifted from Lester to Cape Cod, to Florida, to cheaper bars, dirtier rooms, and homelessness again. `` I lived in the woods for a whole summer. That was the worst,'' Whelan said. `` The only job I could get was sweeping the floor at a hospital.'' He ate crackers for dinner and was given an occasional meal, again by the people next door. Too many gangs, too many fights, too many injuries. God enters his life `` Then in 1987, the Grace of God entered my life,'' the almost priest said. `` I had lived in a wealthy zone, then lived in the streets, the best of both worlds. The good Lord wanted me to go through both things in both worlds. He had a plan. He was always with me, though.'' Whelan began to medicate himself with exercise about 13 years ago. The running calmed the demons. He cleaned himself up to a point where he could help others. He walked for the hungry in Boston -- 20 miles -- and thought, `` Why not start one of these in Attleboro?'' He found the city full of factories, but also full of families who helped each other. `` My brother Eddie and I started it. We knocked on doors and solicited prizes and donations,'' Whelan added. `` I wanted to help people, and that's why I'm doing it. I wanted to give others a hand up. `` Life is about helping each other, not about who has the most toys.'' So, as you register to enter Jim Whelan's Eighth Annual Run For Humanity at 7:30 a.m. on Saturday at La Salette, it might not be a bad idea to remember to shake the hand of its founder. As he says, everybody can use a helping hand.