Blessings for Thanksgiving!

Even in this time of darkness in this country and the world, when crucifixion is as real as it was 2000 years ago, let us find time and room to offer thanks.

My Mother was my first teacher in how to give thanks. She could be described as a simple woman, one who accomplished little that the world would ever note. But she was a fine mother, wife, and grandmother. She, with my Dad, raised her brood of five children, gave us love, taught us to love, and in the end, taught us to be grateful. She touched the lives of her immediate family and her extended family. She helped her alcoholic twin brothers, Dick and Don, fed them, gave them shelter in our little house; offered hospitality to her alcoholic brother-in-law Jack, gave him food and shelter in our little house; gave friendship, companionship to our mentally ill neighbor, MZ; helped raise my brother's three boys; loved and nurtured her 17 grandchildren.

When she passed away, so peacefully back in 2003, with her entire family around her, her last words and gestures were full of gratitude. I hope I can continue to learn gratitude from her. I think it's one of the toughest virtues.

Without trying to make a comprehensive list, I want to express my deepest gratitude for my parents, my family (including cousins, aunts, uncles, and shirt-tail cousins), my sister Mary Ellen, my brothers, Denny, Kevin, and Jim, my wife Linda, my children, Julia, Carolan, and Emily (and their spouses, Eddy and Brian, and Carolan's friend Jeremy), and my two grandboys, Colin and Robby.

I want to express gratitude for my friends, especially my newer friends at the Karpos ministry for the hungry and homeless at St. Mary's Church in Painesville. They are so much fun and so dedicated. Thanks for my college friends, especially those from Notre Dame and the Innsbruck Program; for my dear friends at Lakeland; for my friends in various organizations who battle injustice so fearlessly; for my Cincinnati friends, again, so fearless. They have all taught me faith, hope, and love.

You don't have to be a priest to bless people, so . . .

Dear friends, I bless you, as you have blessed me. And I thank you, from the bottom of my heart, the deepest well of my being!

Go raibh mile maith agaibh! [Irish]

Herzlichen Dank! [German]

Grazie mille! [Italian]

Merci beaucoup! [French]

Thank You!

How We Got the News about the Vietnam War

My niece Rachel Sanders asked this question:

7.  How did you receive most of your news about what was going on in the US and world during the time?

At the beginning of the Vietnam War, I heard some news on the nightly network news programs--CBS with Walter Cronkite, NBC with Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, and less so, ABC. I also watched some of the Today show on NBC back then. There were 3 TV stations in those days--at least on my TV. All programs were broadcast, received over antennas. There was no cable TV and no internet. The internet was not even dreamed about. Of course there were no cell phones (though the Dick Tracy comic strip imagined such a thing).

I also read the Cleveland Plain Dealer (and delivered it!).

While a student at the University of Notre Dame, I saw almost no television until about 1969-70. Almost no students had televisions in their dorm rooms and even radio broadcasts were hard to pick up in the dorms. I often did see the South Bend Tribune and sometimes the Chicago Sun Times. At lunchtime we could sometimes hear the Paul Harvey's radio show broadcast over the PA system. For the most part these were very conservative sources of news, pro-war, super patriotic (in one sense of the word). To be against the war was to be both a traitor and a coward.

Gradually the reality of the war began to sink in, even to the point where Walter Cronkite could no longer echo the Pentagon line--and he started telling it the way it was.

One odd dimension of the news on Vietnam were the body count statistics. It was like keeping score. We heard of hundreds or thousands of Viet Cong deaths every week, and far fewer American deaths (though even these eventually added up to over 55,000--including my cousin (Tommy Fitzpatrick), my Notre Dame friend and classmate (Stephen Shields), and a St. William's classmate (Buddy Chasser).

Toward the end of the war there were many other sources of news--alternative newspapers, newsletters, magazines, and journals. The truth was getting out there, slowly but surely. I helped with one of these newsletters, The Peacemaker, published by Ernest and Marion Bromley, out of the village of Gano, north of Cincinnati, Ohio.

Dorothy Day Article on Ernest and Marion Bromley and the Cincinnati Peacemakers

I've been reading Patsy Harman's book "Arms Wide Open," and it made me think about some of the characters in the book that I knew who were involved in a historic victory for the peace movement. Dorothy Day wrote about it:

 
"Bromley Eviction Halted"
By Dorothy Day
The Catholic Worker, September 1975, 3. 

As we go to press it gives me great joy to write of a victory on the peace front, a victory achieved by the valiant work of the younger members of the peace movement in the United States, which has long known the patient and long-suffering work of such bodies as the War Resisters and the Fellowship of Reconciliation, not to forget, to speak modestly, of the Catholic Worker. As of now, it looks as though our friends, the Bromleys, will not be evicted from the Gano Peacemaker house in Cincinnati, and that the sale of the house, which took place this last summer, will be annulled. Among others, credit can be given to Peggy Scherer, who, in addition to her manual labor here at the farm in Tivoli this past year, had continued her close collaboration with Chuck Matthei in Washington and other Peacemakers around the country. And Lee LeCuyer, who is a tireless worker at First Street, has also leafleted and picketed both in Cincinnati and New York. These are the ones who helped lead the movement which achieved this victory. Ernest and Marion Bromley's patient hard work--picketing, leafleting, resisting, speaking the truth--has not gone unnoticed.

It is a lesson for us all in the peace movement that gentle pressure, constant hard work, a faithful, straightforward--one might even say respectful--adherence to the Scriptural command to love our opponents and to exercise the virtue of hope even when all seems hopeless, offer a great example of the pure means to achieve our ends. Jacques Maritain impressed this use of pure means upon us as in the earliest days of the Catholic Worker. This victory also gives us all a sense of joyful gratitude, not only for the hard work of the young people, but even for those in government office who can respond, as they seem to have, to these persistent, though gentle pressures. Let us pray that this "little" victory will give courage to others around the country to take a stand, which involves a real commitment to the "voluntary poverty" we all talk so much about.

[This text is not copyrighted. However, if you use or cite this text please indicate the original publication source and this website (Dorothy Day Library on the Web at http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/). 

Suggested citation:
Day, Dorothy. "Bromley Eviction Halted". The Catholic Worker, September 1975, 3. The Catholic Worker Movement. http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/Reprint2.cfm?TextID=556]