How I became a Catholic Worker in my later life MARYHOUSE continued from p. 15
was lively, but very different from the faith-centered Catholic Worker. Yet as the ’90s progressed, the city was cracking down on squatters more and more, evicting them from their buildings. One day in 1997 I was at Maryhouse. A woman named Cathy Breen was there; she had spent 10 years in Bolivia as a Maryknoll lay missionary. She heard my German accent and a new chapter in my life began. Cathy, in her friendly, outgoing way, addressed me, and we quickly found an affinity. She was new to the city and eager to make new friends. I was 65 years old by then, 15 years older than her. Many of my friends had died, and others left a New York that was no longer affordable. I saw myself in the category of old, poor, lonely women in New York. I was attracted to the Catholic Worker, where people are treated with a very tolerant kindness. Cathy drew me in. Until then I had been coming to Friday night meetings, and also had begun coming one afternoon to St. Joe’s to help with the cooking for 80. There is cooking for those who live in the houses and their friends, a group I became part of by becoming Cathy’s friend. I once was offered keys but declined, feeling my role was too negligible. Since there is no bell I had to
knock on the broken plexiglas in the door. Sometimes somebody would come sprinting down the stairs immediately; sometimes it would take awhile. I could come for breakfast, lunch and dinner — all lovingly prepared. I’ve almost never come for breakfast, but now I come for lunch and dinner, at times with great frequency, at times with lesser. Living alone, I’m happy to break bread with friendly folk, rather than eat alone and be prone to fall into bad habits of the elderly, such as eating standing up or eating little and not regularly. At St. Joe’s cooking is done for a group called the “guests” but their coming is restricted. For the ladies at Maryhouse a meal is served Tuesday through Friday from noon to 2 p.m.; admission is unlimited, no money is asked, no praying required. The men at St. Joe’s line up outside in the morning at 9:30 and are served soup. Many of the people are homeless. At Maryhouse showers are offered; there is a clothing room in both houses, where donations accumulate. I am more familiar with Maryhouse. The work is done by volunteers and keeping it all running smoothly — as it does — takes managerial skills and efforts. Cathy asked me to join her in the kitchen in the mornings to help her prepare the lunchtime meal served at 11:30 to residents and guests at noon. Until Cathy asked me to help her I found it difficult to find volunteer work that suited me; too much was
rigid and demanding. At the Catholic Worker, commitment is valued. Yet those who come less regularly are also welcome. No hours are set. Cathy, like other volunteers, also had outside paid work. She worked for an asthma project in Harlem, and also began looking for a small apartment outside the house, as many workers have done. But prices had already skyrocketed, a closet on Avenue D going for $500 a month. The many years of inexpensive housing in the area were over. When rents were cheap, Dorothy Day was able to help with rent payments until the renters were back on their feet. In 2002 Cathy accepted an offer from Kathy Kelly, who had founded Voices in the Wilderness, to accompany her to Iraq and stay there until May 2003. Cathy fell in love with the Middle East and its people and has since spent a lot of time there. For a while I still did volunteer work distributing the Catholic Worker newspaper. I had worked as an editor, was familiar with the layout, proofreading, copyediting. I helped manually paste address labels onto the newspaper — now with a circulation of about 30,000, published seven times a year. I immediately investigated barcoding — how most publications are sent out today — and found out it’s actually cheaper than hand-labeling. Labeling is part of the worker philosophy, and through it I met a delightful Frenchman, Roger, a member of the Little Brothers, a
Catholic religious community. In Paris, he had been a chauffeur to Jacques Maritain, the French philosopher, who taught at Princeton during World War II. Roger spent time in Dachau, the German concentration camp; he had been in Africa, and was part of the French worker-priest movement. Unfortunately, he died before too long, and I was asked to write his obituary for the newspaper. Things in life are coming to an end, and by now it’s a quarter of a century since I, in the most informal and accidental way, joined the Catholic Worker. I have learned about its philosophy — a philosophy very congenial to me and that I have lived in many ways: Restrict your material needs to a minimum, do paid work to meet those needs, but have as much time as possible to have time — the most precious commodity. This is often maligned in corporate and academic worlds, where your greatest value is your material value, and where we cite people’s “worth” in dollars and cents. My Harvard Law School grad ex-husband firmly believed productivity is measured by what you earn, and your value measured by the wealth and possessions you have accumulated. He accumulated a lot after he divorced me in 1967 and never shared a cent with me, telling our sons I was a lazy loser. Coming to the Catholic Worker has given me value: the value of being a good human being.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR LETTERS continued from p. 14
Bucks and back to basics To The Editor: Re “Bharucha and board allies are gone, but Cooper Union probe, tuition suit remain” (news article, July 9): The school’s new board must be comprised of some heavy hitters committed to raising the necessary funds to restore Peter Cooper’s legacy: a return to no tuition for students, excellent salaries for the faculty and a restoration of the school’s endowment. Timothy Linn
Will miss those little looks To The Editor: Re “Something feels missing as mailbox store closes” (news article, July 9): You will always be in our hearts and in our
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memory. I will miss those little looks, which said so much. Love you, Lenny. Barbara Gilhooley
Nobody does it better To The Editor: Re “Riots at the Stonewall and magic at Caffe Cino; Gay revolution in Greenwich Village in the ’60s” (Gay Pride, June 25): I can think of no one better than Robert Heide to have written this piece. Besides all the theater and books he and John have created, he is the go-to guy if a researcher is looking for Greenwich Village history and gay history of the 1960s forward. I include Andy Warhol’s scene in his expertise. I know Robert was a resource for John Strausbaugh when he was writing his well-received “The Village: 400 years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues, a History of Greenwich Village.”
Thanks, Robert, for writing this. Clayton Patterson
Write time for Cino book To The Editor: Re “Riots at the Stonewall and magic at Caffe Cino; Gay revolution in Greenwich Village in the ’60s” (Gay Pride, June 25): Bob, advising you as a friend, please take all these bits, pieces, columns, and get the real book done. Madeline Hoffer E-mail letters, not longer than 250 words in length, to news@thevillager.com or fax to 212-229-2790 or mail to The Villager, Letters to the Editor, 1 Metrotech North, 10th floor, Brooklyn, NY, NY 11201. Please include phone number for confirmation purposes. The Villager reserves the right to edit letters for space, grammar, clarity and libel. Anonymous letters will not be published. TheVillager.com