Now 90, these Two Could Write a Best Seller Marriage Manual

 

 

By Robert R. Schwarz

 

 

 

        Kay is ninety, and soon, so will Bob, the man who built most of the home he and Kay moved into when married 56 years ago. A cornerstone at their front porch commemorates that event with: "House of McDermott established Oct. 2, 1954." Near it is an eighteen-inch statue of St. Francis. Above it flies an American flag. Inscribed on a doormat partially covered with snow on the day of this interview was the aphorism "Faith, Family, and Friends—a fitting motto for each of the now seven McDermotts who have given much of their years to their St. James Catholic church two blocks away.

     Touring their home, one observes a tasteful décor that gives no hint that this couple have lived here for almost six decades. "Bob literally built this house," said Kay, proudly mentioning her husband's handiwork work with the plumbing, bathroom tile, paint, and wallpaper—skills Bob learned from his father. "But I did all the interior finishing," she added. "We didn't have much money."

The living room's Colonial furniture included the usual coffee table; on it was a large Bible and a book of the saints. There was a rocking chair, Bob's gift to Kay on their first wedding anniversary, and over the fireplace, a large oil painting of the famed silversmith Paul Revere holding his self-crafted silver tea pot. The McDermotts' taste for fine art also showed on the walls with prints of oil paintings by Picasso, Mary Cassatt, Renoir, and Seurat.

       Their kitchen was down to earth with antiques on the wall, a refrigerator door covered with family snapshots, and a box of Cheerios on the counter. Passing by Bob's office, I paused to glance at the desktop computer. Tongue in cheek, Kay turned to warn, "that room is verboten."

Secrets of a Long Marriage

       It was time to talk about secrets of their long marriage. We pulled up chairs. Kay was in a lavender blouse with a gray sweater and black slacks, and she wore a necklace of multicolored beads and a brass bracelet on her right wrist. She is a petite woman with a kind of alertness in her hazel eyes than any younger senior would envy. Bob cheerfully waited to share some memories and put aside his walker. He sported khaki pants, a blue plaid shirt with a dark blue sweater. He would soon be undergoing spine surgery for compression fractures.

      "When we were married," Bob began, "we got rid of the word 'mine'; it became 'our'. We've always referred to every material thing we have as 'ours'."

           When asked if that included money, he said yes. (A pastor friend of mine with whom I later shared Bob's comments said he would use them during his upcoming marriage counseling talk).

     It was Kay's turn: "We agreed that whenever we had a disagreement, it would not be in front of the children. So, we'd wait until ten in the evening and put on a cup of coffee and discuss things."

           "I don't think we ever really had a real fight, " Bob said.

His wife agreed.

         "If I made a decision in front of the children," Bob said, "she'd back me up one-hundred percent. She may not have agreed with me, but in the bedroom that night she might say 'you made a bad call there.' Then I would have to find a way to get to the child and say 'I think I made a mistake yesterday.' "

At my mention of three bags of books in the hallway waiting for return to the public library, we switched the topic to the McDermott recreation. "We're readers," Kay said. Willa Cather is one of her favorite authors, and she likes autobiographies and mysteries. Her current read is Killing Lincoln. "I usually read the best seller list and then call the library."

       Kay volunteers for parish work "quite a bit," loves to paint miniature oil paintings—some which adorned the walls—and is interested in handwriting analysis.

       "We enjoy being with people rather then going out," Kay continued. She and three other parish women rotate weekly afternoon meetings in their homes for high tea. Kay brings out her Waterford crystal and, "we chat, and one subject rolls into another," she said. "But no gossip—unless we hear someone is ill, and then we pray for them."

       Bob's fun lies with his miniature train set in the basement, where, said his wife, "he left me enough room for the washer and dryer."

      For them both there is the televised Fox News in the morning, "Jeopardy" in the afternoon, and British humor on PBS in the evening.

Their Challenge: Staying Healthy

   Staying mobile and healthy is perhaps their biggest challenge, they admitted. Kay is on her fourth pacemaker and wears compression hose for bad circulation. A nurse neighbor, Gail Madden, [see the previous EXODUS TREKKERS of her interview] visits every morning to help Kay with the hose and to update her on neighborhood news. Bob, besides his compression fractures, has had two open heart surgeries and now has his second pacemaker. The house thermostat in winter is set at 76 degrees.

     Kay shared some humor about the time a doctor was changing Bob's pacemaker. "You'll be very please to know, Mrs. McDermott," the doctor said, "that this new pacemaker is called a St. Jude." Kay replied, "oh, doctor, I'm afraid you don't realize that St. Jude is the patron saint of hopeless cases." The doctor was Jewish.

      Asked what makes him feel good, Bob didn't hesitate to say it's when he's "contributing to people's well-being." Ranking almost as high on his feeling-good list is his wife's smoke butt, cabbage, and potatoes. And what saddens him? "The constant bombardment of immorality on television. The looseness of sex."

     With one word, Kay summed up her happiness: "Chocolate." Then she paused and added that "one of the advantages of being ninety is not worrying about gaining weight." People also make her happy, like " last summer when we celebrated my ninetieth birthday and we put a tent in the back yard for a 110 people." For sadness, Kay points out the pending mandatory contraceptive mandate for the nation, the "assault on marriage," and lack of respect for the Catholic faith.

Wit and Humor Got Them on Their First Date

      Kay and Bob met on the telephone. She was living with her brother, whose employer at the Material Service Corporation in Chicago was Bob, who had called to talk with the brother. Kay answered and a minute later asked her brother's boss if he had a penny, and if so, to see whose picture was on it. "Everybody knows it's Abraham Lincoln," Bob said. Kay, then teasingly implying that her brother worked for slave wages, reminded Bob that that Lincoln freed the slaves. Her wit prompted Bob to ask for a date, and they soon had lunch in a Loop restaurant. That was October; they married a year later, honeymooning at Seal Island, Georgia.

     Five children followed: Tom, now 56 , is an insurance claims agent near Arlington Heights; Mary Kay, 53, an assistant to the inspector general of the Illinois Dept. of Children and Family Services; Neal, 52, president of the McDermott Woodworking company in West Virginia; Sean, 50, director of policy with the Cook County Dept. of Health; and Juliann, 46, a Montessori teacher in Minneapolis. There are nine grandchildren.

'My Faith Has All the Answers'

       Kay was raised on Chicago's Southside in a Catholic family of four boys and four girls. She attended St. Thomas Apostle High School and then St. Joseph college before becoming personal secretary in 1940 to attorney John S. Boyle, who kept Kay in his employ when he was elected in 1948 as state's attorney of Cook County.

     Also raised by a Catholic family, Bob grew up with two brothers in St. Sylvester's parish, in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago and attended Loyola University. His father was a locomotive engineer for the Chicago Milwaukee Railroad; his mother was raised on an Indiana farm. From 1942 to 1945, Bob served in the army as an enlisted supply sergeant for ground crews for B-25 bombers on the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, and the Philippines. "It was an adventure I'm glad I participated in, " he said." [without it] I would have missed the world of fellowship and lessons about life. " Bob retired in 1987 after 38 years as a division manger for Material Services.

       Volunteer church work through the decades have kept all the McDermotts busy. Among a seemingly endless service list for Bob has been his formation of the Retired Men's Group and service on his parish council. Kay has served on three different parish school councils. What has his Catholic faith meant to Bob? "It's got all the answers for me—what we're here for and where we're headed." His eyes moistened when he recalled the death of his mother at age 58 and how an Army chaplain on a South Pacific island during World War II said mass for her using the hood of a jeep for an altar. Kay said her Catholic faith "is who I am."

    Bob and Kay are devout viewers of Catholic television (EWTN) and daily watch its mass program. They also attend mass in the church whenever neighbor Gail Madden picks them up. They have reconciliation (which Kay labels "the lost sacrament") when a St. James priest visits their home. "We are also blessed," she added, "to have Deacon Pierce Sheehan call on us every day to bring us the Eucharist."

    An important life lesson Bob has learned is that he is no longer judgmental of other people. "I look for the good in people, and it's not necessary to go beyond that," he said at the conclusion of our interview. " I just hope I can continue to help people out."

Kay McDermott in the rocking chair which her husband Bob

 gave to her on their first wedding anniversary.

    At their 50^th wedding anniversary, celebrated in the Embassy Suites hotel in Schaumburg, daughter Juliann had these remarks: "I believe no two people have modeled and demonstrated this unique ability to love others more than our mother and father. This love, coupled with their love of God and complete faith in Catholicism, is the hallmark of my parents."

rrschwarz7@wowway.com

© 2012 Robert R. Schwarz 

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Play and Service Guide Family of 8 Thru Each Day

" Let the children come to me "

Jesus: Mark 10:14

 

 

 

 

By Robert R. Schwarz



        When asked her goals for the family, Gail Madden's life story of marriage, motherhood, and the family's bond to their Catholic faith showed in a good natured smile. "Our goal is just to make it though the day," she said.

     Making it through the day for Gail and husband Al has meant finding quality time for their eight children and a full-family commitment to the St. James parish; facing this challenge and others has meant lots of prayers, regular attendance at Sunday mass, and volunteer service that is more than token. Quality time, for example, is not always to found, Gail admitted.

    If the Madden family appears to have avoided all the common dysfunctions of our culture, much credit would go to Dad and Mom's love of playful fun with their kids, the youngest being eight. For example, on this early February day with the mercury at 46 F., Al and 15-year-old Jeff had been playing baseball in street shortly before this reporter rang the doorbell.

      With a son in medical school—his June wedding will be the family's first-- two in college, one in high school, and then Emily (the eight-year-old, who plays the piano), well, no wonder Al's major goal is "to get everybody through school." The eldest, Kathleen, is a physician in New Mexico, and daughter, Julie, teaches first grade in a Catholic school. Another son, Paul, teaches history at a Phoenix high school.

Actually, there are two other family members: a St. Viator high school student, Jae Hyun, who is an 17-year-old Korean youth to whom the Maddens have given a bed in their home; and there is Brenna, a black, feisty Terrier.

        Al is a 58-year-old pension fund lawyer for the Teamsters union, and Gail, five years his junior, a registered nurse working part-time in Palatine at the Clearbrook Center, an agency for the disadvantaged; she also puts in one day each week at Luther Village, a retirement community in Arlington Heights. The family lives a block from the St. James church parking lot in a corner two-floor home with a mortgage that has been refinanced "several times."

      "We don't go out very often," Gail said. "It's too expensive. We have no time for hobbies. "The skills she acquired sowing clothing for her children she now applies to making quilts and knits for charity .

      The Madden family has a history of all-season hiking in forest preserves, biking on nearby woodsy trails or around Lake Arlington, and being Harry Potter fans. (They have seen all the Potter movies and read all the books.) What the Maddens don't do outside, they do in their home; it’s a comfy home with traditional furniture. Some of their family values are reflected in the piano with sheet music displayed on it and seen on the two walls with family photos and four impressionistic water color paintings done by Al's deceased mother, an exhibiting artist who once worked painting portraits of other families on tombstones. "She also loved to paint barns and farms," Gail noted as we walked through the rooms. Nothing idle showed up in the kitchen, where Al, as had father, bakes cookies for the kids.

        If the Madden's dining room could speak, it would likely tell of all the games Al and Gail played—and still do—with their children. Gail especially recalled those weekends "when all the chairs would disappear in order to make forts." In the basement at times you'll hear the grinding hum of a scooter and roller skating—Al tried but could not master the skates.

       "I'm really very juvenile," Al joked—well, sort of. "I like to play what kids play, and this eight-year-old [Emily] has been so much fun."

    Twenty-two years ago the Maddens, having then been married eight years, moved into their home with three children and a fourth on the way. "I met Fr. Peter Bowman [then pastor of St. James] that same day," Gail said. She and Al had first met at a friend's lawn party when Gail was 18, a student at Loyola University in Chicago; Al was a first-year law student at De Paul University. "I thought she was very nice," he said. Gail countered with, "I thought he was very nice, too." A two- and a half-year courtship followed. Al, born in Oak Park, had been working part time for a law firm. "I really didn't know what I wanted to do," he said. Gail, a Niles native, had wanted to teach special education but went for the nursing degree when the demand for those teachers ebbed.

      There is an endless list of volunteer activities which engage the Madden family. Gail serves as a communion and Eucharistic minister, brings communion to Northwest Community hospital, and annually spends a week with her youth ministry on a mission to St. Malachy's parish in the Inner City. Emily has accompanied her mother to Chicago on this mission since age three while her father that same week is using his vacation time in helping his church's youth ministry join forces with the national Catholic Heart WorkCamp. This year , Al, with four other adults, the St. James youth minister, and 30 St. James students will travel to Greensboro, North Carolina to be with seniors and families in crises as they renovate homes and help spruce yards. The group might also facilitate Bible school for children, many of whom are "neglected," Al said. The entire family also pitches in to serve dinners for Catholic Charities.

        Gail and Al serve the St. Vincent De Paul Society,PADS (Public Action to Deliver Shelter), and, for three years, have been religion confirmation leaders. Since 1989, they have been active members of the Christian Family Movement, a national organization that promotes monthly meetings among parish families to discuss issues of faith.

The children are altar servers, and son Jeff serves as Eucharistic minister every other week. "We've always taken the kids to mass on a Sunday since day one," Gail said. As for confession, Al takes the kids to parish reconciliation twice a year, and he himself annually goes on a rosary pilgrimage to Maryville, Des Plaines, led by nearby neighbor Donald Knorr. Al said he follows up with confession within three weeks.

When we talked about life challenges, the Maddens were candid, never holding back a spontaneous chuckle or frown. "I just know that God is going to send me only what He knows I can handle, "Gail said. "When the kids were little, the challenge was trying to give them all enough time and attention."

        Al waded in: "We've been very fortunate. We haven't had any big problems with unemployment or health or any economic problems." He did mention, however, that trying to model right behavior for his children while his 90-year-old mother was dying was "rough." So was the time when his brother unexpectedly had a fatal heart attack while the family was out of town enrolling Paul in college. Then Gail mentioned her miscarriage years ago and the time when Jeff had his jaw broken by a fluke baseball hit. And, a few months after that, there was that phone call saying Mark had been in a car accident and was in the hospital with two broken ribs.

"I feel sad for people who don't have faith and strength to get through tough times," Gail said.

      With several of their children now living in different states, family reunions are another challenge. Yet, last Thanksgiving, all of Gail's family slept over for a 36-hour-long holiday. Gail did the cooking—an obvious challenge made more bearable by dessert having been designated to a home belonging to Al's clan.

     "Life for me," Al said, has "been a gradual learning process of making decisions about what best thing reaches my goal of getting my family and myself to heaven."

###

rrschwarz7@wowway.com

© 2012 Robert R. Schwarz 

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'Night & Day ' Faith Kept Her Going After Death of 2 Spouses, 9 Kids--Then Cancer

By Robert Schwarz

 

 

Last April, Phyllis Shields—you see her in a St. James pew nearly every morning—was diagnosed with lung cancer. This came after a life of tragedies including early deaths of two husbands and the ensuing burden of being a single mom to nine children, one with Down's Syndrome. With characteristic stiff upper lip, she refers to all of this as "disappointments." A little more than five years ago, Phyllis at age 72 fell in love with a retired Palatine dentist two years her senior. They married.

As we talked recently in her eighth floor condo overlooking downtown Arlington Heights—her husband Matthew Lombardi was at her side—Phyllis chose not wear one of her tastefully designed hats she wears at mass to cover a head of missing hair, a casualty of six chemo therapy treatments. "My hair had been salt and pepper the last few years," she said. "I hope it comes back, and I'll take any color." Her dark brown eyes synched with her smile. She then turned serious recalling her exodus trek of "disappointments." Matthew added a footnote now and then.

The big ones began nine years into her first marriage; she was then 25 and her husband, a 29-year-old electrical engineer, when a brain aneurysm fatally struck him, leaving her with their two children and forcing her to find a job. For eight years she worked as a nurse's aide at the Lutheran Home, doing things for the elderly most people would flee from. "My biggest problem was seeing just how sick some of the residents were, and you had to do everything for them." When the beauty salon there lost its manager, Phyllis was hired and held the job for 12 years. "I didn't know how to do hair but I felt I could manage," she said.

Her second marriage was to a quality control manager, a widower with four children. One was Daniel, a three-year-old with Down's Syndrome. She and her husband, Bernard, taught Catholic doctrine classes at their home. During their 13 years together, she bore him three children. Then Bernard died of lung cancer in 1976, making Phyllis a single mom, now with seven children at home; two other children were living on their own. "It tore the family apart," she said, then added, "but they were good marriages."

Daniel, the oldest child, lived at home until age 25, getting a high school diploma after attending special education classes at Kirk High School in Palatine. "Daniel was a blessing to all my children," Phyllis said more than once. "Everybody loved him. He was patient with them and helpful and corrected them when they misbehaved."

But although Phyllis' mothering was aided by her teenage son and younger daughter and by friendly neighbors, she had to return to work for income, yet knowing she couldn't leave Daniel alone. She placed him in Little City, a community-living shelter for children and adults with autism and other developmental disabilities. Now 57, Daniel shares a condo with four other men and works in a Little City shop. Phyllis and Matthew used to have Daniel visit them on holidays but now, his mother explained, "He has become a homebody there. I visit him every six weeks or so and call him on the phone a lot. "

How Her Catholic Faith Got Her Through It

"After my second husband died, I couldn't go to church because I cried all the time I was there," Phyllis recalled. "Father Laramie [ then the St. James pastor ], who was my second husband's uncle, helped a lot. He visited me every Sunday. And Father Bill Zavaski [ then a new priest at the church ] was quite an instrument in helping me. I'd call him and we would talk and pray together. He would always listen. "She reverently remembers how she was encouraged by particular words Fr. Zavaski often said to the congregation." He'd say 'God is good !' and the congregation would reply, ' All the time ! ' "

"I knew that if I wanted a life, I had to make life come back," she continued. "You just can't bury yourself, I told myself." Her comeback came at a Grief Support meeting she attended. There she encountered a woman who had lost her husband 25 years ago. "All she did was cry, and to the point where all the widows there were shaking. "Reliving that moment, Phyllis gasped as she spoke: "I suddenly realized I didn't want to live like that. I told myself, "you're not dead."

But early in 2011, she had to face perhaps the most difficult challenge of all. It started with a bad cough that lasted three weeks and which was eventually diagnosed as lung cancer. "'I had smoked for a long time, but had quit," she said.

Tears now came as she grabbed Matthew's arm. "But Matt brought me through it. He was a very positive thinker. I begged the Lord to leave me here on earth. I had work to do for Him as well as for myself. I tried to believe in prayer but found it very difficult."

Her husband interrupted: "Everyone was praying for you: the Lutherans, the Presbyterians, the Baptists."

"I leaned on Matt for everything," Phyllis went on. "He made it bearable for me."

She said she lived her Catholic faith night and day .

The Third Time a Charm—and Blessing

     Phyllis' and Matthew's courtship began in early 2005 in their current condominium building home, where they hardly knew each other. One floor separated them; she lived on the eighth and he on the seventh. A few days before New Year's Eve, Matthew, who had been widowed, asked a friend to recommend a date for him for a holiday celebration he didn't want to attend alone. "Ask Phyllis," came the friend's advice. Matthew did.

"I hadn't been on a date in 15 years," Phyllis said.

A year later, on December 28, 2006, Fr. Zavaski married them; six other priests and two deacons co-celebrated the sacrement. Quipped Fr. Zavaski, "Their marriage reaffirms the fact that love and marriage is timeless."

Today their family includes 25 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren. "Matt loves all my children and they love him," Phyllis said. She admits that Matthew "took on a lot when he married me." The couple take several family visiting trips each year, and the highlight—Phyllis' happiest event —is the annual family reunion at the end of July in Louisville, Kentucky.

Matthew had a few emotional words about attending his first family reunion in Kentucky. He was overwhelmed by his wife's 150-member family. "I'm not a hugger," he said. "But in Kentucky they hug you to death."

Missing from a recent reunion was Phyllis' brother, Kenneth, who died at age 71 from complications from Alzheimer's. He had been a Chicago policeman for 25 years.

Nowadays, Phyllis and Matthew reflect on their many past volunteer efforts which involved them as twosome prior to the cancer treatments. The list includes the St. Vincent de Paul Society, PADS, Foundation for Children in Need, and various church duties which assist the mass. Meanwhile, they enjoy their usual diversions of "experiencing different restaurants," checking out a movie from the public library, or simply laughing at silly stuff on television reruns of "Everyone Loves Raymond." They also keep adding to the wide assortment of Nativity scenes which grace their living room and which they have decided not to pack away this year. For a private getaway, there is that land they own up north in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

But if you want to see Phyllis and Matthew fully alive, drop in on any weekday morning at McDonald's on Arlington Heights Road near Rand Road. There, from 8:30am to 9:30am—and maybe a bit longer-- you'll see these two in the company of five or six others who have just left the St. James mass. You'll recognize the group by the roar of belly laughter that truly fills the room, from the food counter way back to the kid's playroom. "Phyllis is the kingpin of our group," says Tom Adam, an octogenarian and often provocateur for the group's outbursts of laughter. "Nothing bad comes out of her mouth. But she can also give it back. She makes me happy when I go home."

      But the happiest outburst came from Phyllis when asked that delicate question. With sparkling eyes, I heard her announce to the world: "I am free of cancer!"

###

rrschwarz7@wowway.com

© 2012 Robert R. Schwarz

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From Ireland to St. James, and Now He's Our Man in Haiti

  By Robert R. Schwarz

Waiting to board for Port au Prince are (from left)
Kathy McGourty, Christine Westerkamp,
Lucas Sykes, Kim Lamberty (Director of Just Haiti project),
Niall McShane.

         Niall McShane and five other St. James members are lighting a candle in the darkness of Haiti. This 48-year-old native Irishman and his group returned in early January with a success story about, well, it's all about coffee.

         The group's mission was to make friends with a few hundred coffee growers in a remote region of Haiti , giving them moral and spiritual support in securing fair prices for their crop of coffee beans. For McShane, a member of his church's Peace and Justice committee, the mission was a success and a soul-changing experience .

        Speaking impassionedly in an interview about his week trek to this Caribbean island, McShane began by quoting a coffee grower: "Before this project started we had no hope," the man told him. The words moved McShane to tears.

In the town of Baradères, an all-day drive over mountain roads, McShane and his group met with the coffee grower association, Kafé Devlopman Baradè. In social interactions with the townspeople, the group learned how getting a fair price for their coffee beans has dramatically changed Haitian lives. People in Baradères related how they can now provide health care for their families and put their children through school and to properly feed and clothe them. But McShane emphasized that his group's efforts went "way beyond charity." He explained: "Charity can breed dependency, and this project is all about sustainability. It's allowing these people to live in poverty with dignity. In the eyes of God, they have as much dignity as you or I or Bill Gates."

         As we talked in his downtown Arlington Heights condo, the blue-eyed McShane became increasingly animated as he looked at his laptop PC at some of the several hundred images he captured on the trip. "The world defines Haiti and the Haitian people by their poverty but we're all so much more than our circumstances, so much more than our possessions," he intoned with an Irish brogue that recalled to mind some college professor with a baritone voice using disciplined diction. "We're so much more than where we live and what we do for a living." To flesh out his point, McShane, who is employed by a Chicago company as a computer software engineer, related a scene he saw at the Miami airport security walk-through: The scanner detected a wristwatch on a man. "The man didn't say, ' Oh, my watch !' He said, ' Oh, Rolex ! ' "

Why Are So Many Haitians Poor ?

          Having grown up in small Irish country town blighted with thirty per cent unemployment, Niall is no stranger to the poor. I asked for his opinion about the causes of widespread Haitian poverty. I mentioned past media reports about the country's cult of voodoo and other religious superstitions being blamed for keeping Haiti poor. "That's b--- s---," he said firmly. "We [ his group ] discussed this topic extensively and concluded that the Haitian poverty is caused by the hundreds of years of exploitation, such as the massive reparations inflicted by France when Haiti won its independence from that country in 1804. It was not paid off until the 1950s. "Since then, opined McShane, Haiti has been used as a pawn by great powers and that it has been exploited (such as the deforestation of its mahogany trees) by corporate and political interests, including those of the United States. "For things to change in Haiti, there has to be a change in the attitudes in countries like the United States so that they are working for the bests interests of the people," he said.

   Haitian poverty also has domestic causes, McShane admitted. According to sources cited by Wikipedia.Org, Haiti has suffered 32 government coups in its 200-year history and has consistently ranked among the most corrupt countries in the world, where seven out of ten Haitians live on less than $2 a day. And the country has yet to recover from the devastating earthquake of Jan. 12 , 2010 in which a reported 220,000 Haitians died, leaving in this wake another high death toll from diseases such as cholera. United States aid organizations have donated more than $2 billion to Haiti.

        We talked about the Catholic church in Haiti. "From what I can see, the Catholic church is one of society's pillars there," McShane said. "Everything that we saw was being driven by the Catholic church…The pastors in parishes in Haiti are truly the leaders of their communities. They're not only maintaining their parishes and schools but also building the economy of their parishes and their regions. "

      The group, consisting of Pierre and Nerlande Herard, Lucas Sykes, Christine Westerkamp, and Kathy Mc Gourty [ see her website Exodus Trekker story of Oct. 14 2011], who started St. James' Peace and Justice committee and has been an active supporter of Fair Trade Coffee since 2009, gathered every evening after dinner to reflect on the day's events, especially how God had been involved. "We asked God," McShane said, "where did we see You in the people we met? But to be honest, I think it's going to take months to fully process our experience. This was an emersion in a culture so different from our own."

Niall McShane and coffee growers pause a discussion for the camera.

        The group often was up early each day, thanks to the 4:30 a.m. wakeup call of roosters. The six traveled to other villages, including the city Les Cayes, where they met the diocese bishop, Msgr. Chibly Langlois, president of the Haitian Council of Bishops. A group member counted 23 hours that they drove their vehicle through mountainous terrain, often on dirt roads. "It's not for the faint-hearted," mused McShane, who keeps trim by cycling and working out at the Arlington Heights Wellness Center. "I don't know when, but I'm going back, to help build a relationship with another village."

The president of the coffee growers association and
and the machine for processing washed coffee.

McShane moans a bit to help start a generator.

           Meanwhile, the village of Baradères will this year ship 10, 000 pounds of coffee beans ; a portion will go to the Baltimore Coffee and Tea company, which will roast the beans and then package them; another portion will be sent to church communities like St. James where, often along with Fair Trade chocolate bars, will be sold to parishioners; and a third portion will be sold through the website "JustHaiti.org." The latter is a volunteer, multi-service tax-exempt organization, which claims it helped the coffee growers' association in 2009 sell its coffee for more than three times the fair trade price.

         "It's an unbelievable business model," McShane said, now taking his eyes off the laptop images of his trek. "No middle man. All of the profit goes back to Baradères."

Coming of Age in Hectic Times

     Niall's childhood until age 11 was spent in the heavily Catholic-populated Northern Ireland town of Strabane where his father taught grade school for children with learning disabilities. His mother also taught grade school but later became a stay-at-home mom. A brother, Paul, died at age 22, and a sister, Bairbre—she prefers the Irish spelling for Barbara—is a 46-year-old pastoral resources worker today in an Irish archdiocese. A step-sister, Eithne, is a company human resources employee in England.

       At age seven, Niall's mother died, leaving her husband to care for the three children in the early 70s, an era Niall described as a "pretty hectic time in Northern Ireland." The earlier Civil Rights unrest in that country had led to the British government sending troops into the country." Because of all this, my dad chose to send my brother and I to a boarding school run by Vincentian priests," Niall recalled. "They were pretty strict and believed in corporal punishment and the good ole fashioned stuff." He is "quite sure" that whacking he got once or twice was quite was deserved.

     Those early boarding school years were tough for Niall who, with his brother, could come home for a weekend only once a month. Separation from family still bothers him today. "Loneliness is something that affects me a lot . Companionship is very important to me."

      After boarding school, Niall graduated from the University of London, where he majored in physics and astronomy. Marriage to an Irish lass followed. While working in Germany, daughter Jenie, was born. Now 23, she is earning a master's degree in ergonomics at Indiana University. She wears a black belt in the martial arts.

      After working for the Motorola company in Ireland and then as a Motorola liaison for their Arlington Heights plant, the McShanes immigrated to America in 1995, where Niall worked as a software engineering manager until November of 2009. He is now employed by Cleversafe, Inc. in Chicago.

When asked what his life's challenges have been, Niall mentioned the unfortunate collapse of his marriage, currently being annulled by the Catholic church. "Out of that came a lot of depression, a lot of anger," he admitted. "I was feeling pretty broken. But I think that's mostly in the past." Looking out his third floor window at the train station across the street, he recalled how he surmounted this dark period with faith, with reading Psalms about how God lifts up the broken, and with the love and support of family (he went to Ireland for a month in the midst of his turmoil) and friends like the faith-group men with whom he meets from 6 to 7:30 a.m. on Saturday mornings in the St. James basement.

       Niall doesn't spend a lot time in recreation; when he does, it's working out at the local gym, reading a variety of books—his current one is about particle physics—and cooking his own dinner. (My wife and I found his Irish soda bread delicious.)

In sizing up his goals, Niall quotes popular Catholic lecturer and author Matthew Kelly: "Be the best version of yourself." To Niall, this means being a good father, employee, and member of the community. "There are times," he reflects, "when I feel I can do a whole lot better, but also times when I feel I am using the gifts God gave me. 

Home sweet home - with many reflections
 for Niall after an arduous trip.

       As for what pumps Mr. McShane's heart so hard for peace and justice issues, such as those he addressed in Haiti, it might be the memory of his father's decades of service with the St. Vincent de Paul Society in Ireland, an organization to which Niall belongs at St. James. But the spark, Niall says, came from a homily about "respect for life" he heard delivered in 2008 or 2009 by former St. James priest, Fr. Jim Hearne. "He gave a a phenomenal homily in which he broadened the whole concept of respect for life," Niall said. "It went beyond the issue of abortion and into respect for all life. It really struck a chord with me and tapped into something I had felt for a very long time."

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rrschwarz7@wowway.com

© 2012 Robert R. Schwarz

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Grace Abounds in Nun's Story Of Her Rape and Motherhood

By Robert R. Schwarz

                

      You've see  her on the corner  of Northwest Highway and  Arlington Heights Road holding up the sign " Bring Our Troops Home"  and also as that  woman beaming with smiles while giving the mass  host at St. James church .  And you might have seen  her  in her  Certified Nursing Assistant  uniform  at a nearby nursing home where she's been giving her best for  12 years to dementia  residents. But you probably haven't heard her  bitter-sweet life story as an exodus trekker.

          It began for Sr.  Christine Baty,  a 60-year-old  nun of the Sisters of the Living Word order  in Arlington Heights, Illinois,  at  age five when a bully who  in her Evanston apartment building hit her severely on the head with a spade.  The trauma  required several  brain surgeries and led to  petit mal seizures  ( a type of epilepsy) . At 20 ,  her hands became arthritic, which would later  cut short her love of  piano playing.  Then there was the  non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. (Today she is a three-year survivor of it)

            But the  severest challenge  hit her on what she expected to be an innocent prom date . Sr. Christine and her teenage companion   had just left the dance at Mt. Prospect High School and were on their way to another prom affair.  He parked the car and raped  Sr. Christine. 

            She didn't tell  police nor her  family. "Nobody in those years ever pressed charges about things like that,"  Sr. Christine said during her interview with this reporter. "You know,  back then it was always the girl's fault. "  Later, following a priest's direction, she forgave her attacker.  

 Shorty after she had enrolled in bookkeeping classes ( her father was a CPA and her mother a file clerk ),  Sr. Christine, 18 years old ,   discovered she was pregnant. She considered an abortion. "My mother said, ' if you want,  we'll  have it done. ' Yeah,  I said to myself, that would be the easy way out. But in the end I could not end the life now in me.  And  I was not in any position to be a mom. "

Sr. Christine  moved into a home for unwed mothers, managed by the Salvation Army. There baby  Michael was born in February, 1970 and given up for adoption.

Though up to now in our  interview ,  this nun had spoken openly about traumas most humans would never want to mention—unless , like Sr. Christine, it could  somehow be told for the common  good.  Now she took off her dark-rimmed glasses, paused,   and lowered her head.

            "The last time I saw my child he was five days old. What was really hard was when the lady from Catholic  Charities came to pick him up to take him  to his adoptive parents. When she walked out with my  baby in her arms, she passed  my father coming through the door. My father never realized that was his grandson whom he had brushed by that day. I never told him. I guess that as painful as it was for me , it would have been for him."

A  Dark  Period

            Sr. Christine described the next two years  as her " dark period."  "I had always wanted  to be two things: a nurse and a nun. I thought now that my chances of being a nun were thin.  I went into a spiritual decline, saying to myself, God couldn't possibly want me—I'm not pure enough."  A life of sex, drugs, a bit of marijuana, and rock'n'roll now began.  

            She married a guitar player she had met in a Chicago bar. They moved to California for a year then returned to Chicago. Her husband , she said, drank a lot,  smoked  pot, and used  LSD. "I knew I had made a terrible mistake."   She bore his  child and named it Jennifer;  but  when her husband became physically abusive to Sr. Christine and, fearing  he might also harm Jennifer, she  left him three weeks later and moved in with her parents.

            Sr. Christine would later write this on the Sisters of the Living Word webpage: "Life as a single mom was far from easy. I worked several jobs trying to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. Several times I had to rely on public assistance programs to make ends meet. During this time , beginning in 1974, I began a process of returning to the church.  In 1982, during a time of retreat, I experienced very strong desire to make a gift of my entire life to God. For the next 10 years I became increasingly involved in parish ministry, working with faith-sharing groups, scripture study groups , visiting the sick and homebound, and taking  on liturgical roles. My prayer life became central to my everyday living , and perhaps because of this, my desire to devote my life to God deepened….I began to wonder if religious life might still be possible for me. Over the next two years I investigated many communities , eventually becoming drawn to the Sisters of the Living Word.

"I look back and see God's handiwork in just about everything. Every time we were getting down to the bottom of the barrel-- how to pay rent, buy food-- something good happened. I learned things about people, relationships."

The Clouds Lift

            Jennifer, now 38, is  a financial analyst in Naperville. "I'm so proud of her,"  Sr. Christine said. She is so bright and has wonderful instincts for giving back. "  A few years ago Jennifer  and some  friends formed a not-for-profit agency where unemployed people could come and take what clothes they needed for job interviews.

            Seven years ago at St. James  with Fr. Bill Zavaski presiding,  Sr. Christine took her final  vows:  poverty, chastity, and obedience." I get my spiritual energy here at St. James, " she said. "This parish has more life in it than any other parish  I've been in."   Nowadays her goals are simple: "To keep working as long as I can. I love what I do."   She also has her eye on opposing  human trafficking , where women from Third World countries  who have been deceptively persuaded to  immigrate to America   are then coerced into prostitution or, in some cases, forced to work as virtual slaves.

            "Chris is a very dedicated health care professional, " said Sr. Barbara Mass, who has know her fellow nun for 20 years.   "It's very  obvious that her difficult  life  has molded her with compassion."

            Sr. Christine does,  however,  make room for fun and recreation. " I love to fish," she said exuberantly. " Give me a boat, tackle box and six-pack of beer—and just let me go."  ( She goes after those big Muskies in Northern Wisconsin. )   She admits to being a bookworm—mysteries by Lindsey Davis,  whose protagonist is a detective living in ancient Roman times. And now and then she and the two nuns with whom she shares an apartment  enjoy  what they jokingly label their "holy hour" of watching  television's  crime program "N.C.I.S."          

This nun  is made sad by the devaluing of human life as seen in the  Sudan famine, and made happy by her faith, prayer, work , and her daughter.  

Her hazel  eyes flinched  once or twice when talking about the  baby she gave up for adoption decades ago and whom  she has not seen since.  She had named him Michael David but his adoptive  parents switched it to  David Michael.  Much later in life, Michael began searching for his birth parents,  eventually locating  his birth mother.  Since then, Sr. Christine and David Michael have exchanged emails and begun planning to meet . David today is a 41-year-old mechanical engineer living in Barrington . He has sent Sr. Christine  Face Book-posted  photographs of himself . "The physical resemblance between him and me is unbelievable.  "

 Sr. Christine says the two  are building a relationship, yet is quick to add, " But there's nothing inside me that identifies me as being his mother. He is their child."

Then she said something that seem to absolutely still the air around  us for a long moment. "I have come to understand that as horrible as it was about my baby coming into being , I was the channel of grace  for that other couple who could not have children of their own."

            At the end of our  interview, Sr. Christine was asked  what final meaning she sees in her life.  Her words came easy, without hesitation: "I learned that in the worst part of my life God was there  with me and has never left me. Even in  the  car that night—God was with me . God doesn't make things like that happen,  but sometimes God allows things like that to happen –because the ultimate gifts that come from things like that are worth it. I would today not change anything in my life, including the bad things."

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                                                                                                  rrschwarz7@wowway.com

© 2011  Robert R. Schwarz

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