City lights
Byrne, Henry J.
City lights HARRY J. BYRNE The following is adapted from a regular column, "From the Pastor's Desk," appearing in the parish bulletin of Epiphany Parish in New York City. he news media, both...
...All in a night's work...
...A big salute to our city' s bus drivers— saints of patience not yet properly canonized...
...Alice joined in January 1982...
...and Mrs...
...At the pier at the end of 23rd Street, someone had heard a splash and phoned 911...
...He just pulled someone out of the river...
...A dominant disposition to goodness is found in many other places in our city, very frequently among the men and women of the NYPD...
...in 1988 they were married...
...he news media, both print and TV, are preoccupied by the things that go wrong...
...My leg injury of last May has kept me out of the subway: too many stairs...
...A police helicopter arrived and dropped a life ring, which the thrashing figure pushed away...
...We juggle schedules as best we can, and when that doesn't work we alternate with Larry Oliveti on Truck One and his wife—she's a sergeant on Staten Island...
...Mark shook out a wet rubber suit...
...One of their smaller trucks rolled up and Ken Winkler and Mark DeMarco jumped out...
...Ken went to Our Lady of Perpetual Help school and Xavierian Academy in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, then spent a couple of years at Kingsboro Community College...
...Alice today is a detective in the Staten Island "Crimes Against Persons" squad...
...A dominant or regular disposition to goodness requires too wide an angle for the narrow focus of the TV camera or the limited space of a news article...
...Larry Oliveti, and their partners in blue...
...But New York abounds in examples of the day-to-day, year-to-year practice of virtue, examples we often fail to notice...
...Ken had initially failed a scuba diving test (he didn't know how to swim...
...The sudden violent act, the disaster, the pathologies of life claim disproportionate attention...
...Another was quickly attached, and in another fifty feet he reached the struggling figure, who spouted water at him and told him to get lost...
...They met, worked together, and dated...
...Ken, already suited up, dove into the murky water...
...Harry J. Byrne is a priest of the Archdiocese of New York...
...Then the patient wait for people with canes, purse fumblers, and those who want out when they find they are on a "Limited" bus...
...Each moment requires steady attention and careful control in the flood of trucks, cars, taxis, bicycles, and rollerbladers...
...But Ken persisted and soon his line tenders had both back on shore, along with the rejected life ring...
...31 THE LAST WORD...
...I asked...
...Msgr...
...How do you deal with two little kids...
...He entered the department in October 1981...
...So on his own time he went to the YMCA and learned to swim, passed the test, and is now a certified "Dive Master" who teaches scuba diving to ESU officers...
...A big salute to Ken and Alice, to Mr...
...A little applause for Ken," he said...
...Not a pulse-throbbing story, but what it shows is that there's a lot of commitment in this city, of dominant disposition to goodness and a deep respect for what life is all about...
...The mix of people, their stoic endurance in traffic jams, and the steady patience of the bus drivers carry their own inspiration...
...A week ago I was chatting with some of the men of Emergency Service Unit, Truck One, opposite the rectory...
...But I found an interesting world in the city's buses...
...Ken lives with his wife, Alice, on Staten Island, with their two children, a five-year-old who is in first grade at Saint Charles's school, and a one-year-old...
...The drivers don't have steel rails to guide their multi-ton vehicles...
...There is no idle moment save when, like a miniature Queen Mary, the bus sweeps up to its curbside wharf and exchanges passengers to and from the street...
...When his 100-foot line ran out, he called for more line...
Vol. 121 • December 1994 • No. 21
