Call 202-456-1111, ask for George
Gilroy, Jack
Paul went home for a brief furlough; the scene was too close to my brother Joe's homecoming from Vietnam, right down to both mothers going to the stove to fry potato pancakes for their war-weary...
...It's up to the churches and the peace movement to make the people feel the poetry and pity of it...
...The Little Brothers target lonely, elderly people with no relatives or close friends at hand...
...It wasn't discussing the commandment, Thou Shalt Not Kill...
...It wasn't the release of the Pentagon Papers...
...I think I would have the same fear if I was in his situation:" Westin continued, "Here's the enemy, but for me, at that time, it wasn't...
...The English poet Wilfred Owen, who was himself killed in World War I, wrote, "My subject is war and the pity of war...
...A church that prays for peace but justifies war is wasting its time...
...So far they've done an excellent job of making the U.S...
...Artists, poets, storytellers, and songwriters can help us...
...So can ordinary people like Coast Guard Lieutenant J.G...
...A people that seeks a new world order without first recognizing how precious is life and how pitiful is war is wasting its time...
...of a young Vietnamese girl running down a highway, naked and screaming, her back ablaze with napalm...
...Oh, that we would all grasp that insight and stop wasting time...
...Bonaventure, a Franciscan college in Olean, New York, she knew that she did not want the business world that she experienced during her summer intemships...
...Her employers, the "Little Brothers," had a motto---"Flowers before food...
...Maureen visited, talked, shopped with, did chores with, and helped them with daily trials...
...of the dusty village of My Lai strewn with bloody bodies of old women and young children...
...Call 292-456-1111, ask for George hen Maureen finished her studies at St...
...Maureen accepted a full-time position counseling teen-age runaways...
...Over a twoyear period she became family with a group of forty or more regulars who came to share meals she prepared and served...
...It was vivid pictures of endless body bags holding eighteen-year-old boys from Tacoma and Tempe and Cleveland...
...citizens against Vietnam...
...MARY LOU KOWNACKI Mary Lou Kownacki, O.S.B., is national coordinator of Pax Christi USA, the national Catholic peace movement headquartered in Erie, Pennsylvania...
...Money is not the answer to our problem," she noted more than once...
...When the Franciscans called Maureen and asked her to run a soup kitchen back in Olean, she left Boston and bonded her love and hard work to the poor of Olean...
...The military-industrial complex has as its subject war and the patriotism of war...
...The characters became real life to us when she had the rare opportunity to come home for a short visit...
...And how much time can we afford to waste...
...The Pentagon knows what turned average U.S...
...Her stories were always warm, full of humor, love, and sadness...
...Short days ago we lived, felt dawn, saw sunsets glow loved and were loved, and now we lie in Flanders Fields...
...For two-and-a-half years she has held onto her idealism...
...The poetry is in the pity...
...I had an image of fierce, ruthless fighters, but, really, these men weren't different from you or me," he told the Washington Post...
...public feel the honor and glory of the Persian Gulf war...
...A radio station that sponsors a vote for bad guys during a human tragedy is wasting its time...
...Always hoping to do more for the poverty-stricken families, she complained that resources were always sparse...
...Her letters from Belfast were both chilling and comforting...
...A peace movement that relies on rhetoric rather that making present the human face of war is wasting its time...
...When I taught junior high school, I knew what made my students passionate about peace...
...Yet, she complained to her mother of the lack of clothing at the New York City funded shelter where she works...
...Working with the Society of Friends (Quakers), she deepened her respect for that marvelous group who taught her Irish history, culture, and horror...
...Money was just not available...
...the scene was too close to my brother Joe's homecoming from Vietnam, right down to both mothers going to the stove to fry potato pancakes for their war-weary sons...
...Her mother took her to a low-overhead discount store where they bought underwear for the girls coming from the street...
...Spending a few dollars is better than having to separate angry girls fighting over pants and bras," she said...
...When I started working with the first prisoner, I saw the fear in his eyes and saw him shaking...
...It was a life...
...Walter Westin, twenty-eight, of Richmond, Virginia, a crewman on the Nicholas, the Navy guided-missile frigate that captured the first twenty-three Iraqi prisoners of war...
...She learned how to walk quickly past British soldiers toting machine guns at the ready position, and how to try to understand the connection between economic injustice and selfish political interests...
...We understood when she told us that she was leaving for Belfast, Ireland, to work with children tom apart by intolerance, economic injustice, and hate...
...It was literature class, when I had them lie on their backs on the classroom floor and imagine being buried six feet underground while they reverently recited: We are the dead...
...With many more kids lost to drugs, pimps, and the street than success stories of boys and girls going back home, or accepted by caring foster parents, she has clung to hope...
...Maureen's first work was with elderly people in Boston...
...120: Commonweal...
...Home from Ireland, it was only a few days before she was off to another wartom city, a place of guns, murders, drugs, and economic injustice--New York City...
Vol. 118 • February 1991 • No. 4
