'Heart! Heart! Heart!': Jerry Berrigan, at 95, on greatest moment
in life of conscience
2010-02-04-mjg-Berrigan1[1](1).JPG
Jerry Berrigan, in 2010: In his
90s, a life shaped by the example of his parents. (Mike Greenlar | mgreenlar@syracuse.com)
Sean Kirst | skirst@syracuse.com By Sean
Kirst | skirst@syracuse.com The
Post-Standard
on July 25, 2015 at 6:29 AM, updated July 25, 2015 at 1:54 PM
on July 25, 2015 at 6:29 AM, updated July 25, 2015 at 1:54 PM
Jerry Berrigan can offer plenty of first-hand stories about
giants.
Dorothy Day, one of the founders of the legendary Catholic Worker
movement, was a friend. Day believed in "a revolution of the heart,"
in the idea of hospitality and community for those who have the least.
When Day visited Jerry and his wife Carol in Syracuse, she spent a
night at their home in the Valley.
Just over 50 years ago, Jerry traveled to Selma for the great
march for voting rights, part of a contingent led by the Rev. Charles Brady of
Syracuse. By sheer chance, they had an opportunity to meet Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr.
That was three years before King was shot to death by an assassin.
Berrigan said his overwhelming reaction – in a place where he witnessed the
essence of raw hatred – was a sense of just how willing King was to put himself
at ultimate risk, for a higher cause.
Decades earlier, as a young American soldier during World War II,
Jerry had served Mass for Padre Pio in Sicily. Pio was revered among Catholics
for bearing the stigmata, the wounds of Christ, and he'd later be canonized as
a Catholic saint.
At 95, Jerry offers those tales in a voice as soft as a whisper,
an English teacher pausing to contemplate the impact of each word, face
illuminated by sunlight pouring into the house. Yet when asked about his larger
approach to the world -- how he found his way to the principles linked to the
family name -- he does not turn to moments found in history books.
He speaks instead of his father, asking for a glass of water.
Of his mother, telling a stranger to come in.
Of the moment when Jerry pushed a doorbell at a back door in East
Syracuse, and the gift was the strength that sustains him today.
In those stories, amid times of global grief, he finds his hope.
Jerry and his brother Dan are the last surviving siblings of a
Syracuse family renowned for activism. Dan and Phil, another of six brothers,
became Catholic priests. In 1963, after witnessing King's "I have a
dream" speech, they wrote an open letter to The Post-Standard,
challenging Syracuse to confront rigid borders of segregation.
"Those who help others to freedom," Dan and Phil
concluded, "have themselves taken the first step toward becoming free
men."
In that way, like Jerry, they lived out a family creed. A few
years later, their opposition to the war in Vietnam – including the burning of
federal records at a draft board in Maryland – led to arrests that gave Dan and
Phil an international profile, and put them on the cover of Time Magazine.
Jerry and
Carol Berrigan, 2001, after being named recipients of the Dorothy Day Award -
for helping those in need - in Central New York. Jerry and Carol Berrigan of
Syracuse have been given the Dorothy Day Award for their work with the
poor.John Berry | The Post-Standard
Phil died in 2002. Dan, in fragile health, lives with other
retired Jesuits at Fordham University.
Until their arthritis grew too severe for them to use their pens,
he and Jerry would write to each other every week. Even now, when it is
difficult for them to speak by telephone, Jerry's grown children serve as
intermediaries in sending messages back and forth.
In their 90s, the brothers share an appreciation that became their
way of life:
They are among the last witnesses to the quiet mission of their
parents, Tom and Frida Berrigan.
Jerry still follows the daily news of the world, the relentless
accounts of war, terror and bloodshed. Asked if his belief in peace remains
unshaken, he responded with a smile that seemed to rise from nowhere, and he
answered by telling a few stories ....
His building blocks.
The Berrigans, devout Catholics, often worship at St. Lucy's
Church, where Jerry said he defines his faith by the example of his mother:
"It means," he said, "always remaining open."
During the Great Depression, when he was a child, the Berrigans
lived near some railroad tracks in Galeville. Wandering strangers, hungry and
jobless, often traveled past their house.
A man once came to the door, his body trembling as he asked for
food. Frida didn't know him, but she could tell he was ill. She feared for his
well-being. She brought him in. He stayed for months, until he rebuilt his
strength. To the Berrigan boys, Jerry said, he was simply Mr. Kirby.
Once he left, the Berrigans never heard from him again, but the
point – for Tom and Frida's six children – had been made.
"We are not to reject anyone," Jerry said.
His father was a union organizer, an early activist in efforts to confront
the ongoing racial divide in Syracuse. Jerry described his dad as "a
peaceful man," and one of the son's most vivid memories is a day when Tom
Berrigan came home so exhausted from his shift on a lighting crew that he
stepped off a truck and collapsed onto the grass by their house.
Jerry asked what he could do to help. Tom said he'd like a glass
of cold water. More than 80 years later, Jerry remembers what the most
fundamental of gestures, at that moment, meant to his father:
Everything.
For years, Jerry taught composition, literature and Shakespeare at
Onondaga Community College. He and Carol were close to Rev. Ray McVey, a
selfless Catholic priest who embodied the Dorothy Day philosophy. They joined
McVey in visiting prisoners in jail. They helped him establish Unity Acres,
a place of respite for homeless men.
Jerry was arrested and jailed so often for taking part in peaceful
protests that he's lost count, he said, of how many times he wore handcuffs.
From all of it, this treasury of stories, he said the greatest
moment in his life occurred in that back yard in East Syracuse. For years,
Jerry and Phil studied to join the Josephites, an order of Catholic priests
dedicated to the African-American community. Eventually, Jerry decided to step
away.
In 1954, he was invited to a gathering at the home of Peg Snyder,
who was dean of women at Le Moyne College for seven years and would become a
groundbreaking voice at the United Nations for improving the global status of
women. Carol Rizzo, one of Peg's friends, came over to share slides of a
trip to Italy. When she heard someone at the back door, she answered it.
After 61 years, Carol and Jerry both remember that instant when
they first stood face to face. They were married in autumn 1955. They'd raise
four children. Jerry speaks of
them as the core of all he did. As for Carol, he describes her with three words:
them as the core of all he did. As for Carol, he describes her with three words:
"Heart! Heart! Heart!"
Through her, over the years, he could always find his way to his.
Long ago, he decided against becoming a priest for what he said
was the most fundamental of reasons: "I wasn't holy enough."
Carol, upon hearing that, reacts with disbelief. What she sensed
when she met him, she said, is what he still demonstrates each day:
Jerry Berrigan, she said, is "the holiest man I've ever
known."
Sean Kirst is a columnist with The Post-Standard. Email him at skirst@syracuse.com or send him a
message on Twitter.
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"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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