Memorial Day Trip

Frank and I went to Wernersville to visit our friend Jack Martinez. We knew him in Baltimore where he worked tirelessly to investigate the housing markets that were so tilted against blacks owning homes. Jack told us this story of a surprising rebuke from his Jesuit superior: he had taken part on a picket line at the offices of one of the most unscrupulous of the housing speculators. When he did not challenge an injunction and was not arrested with the other pickets, his Jesuit superior later asked, "why? The others would have been treated better if you had joined them."

Here we are in Maclean, Va. in the Church of St. Luke where my brother has just joined in the Memorial Day performance of the Washington Men's Chorus. Several trained and talented musicians make up the heart of the chorus and my brother enjoys singing with them. This particular concert is a tribute to the men and women in the armed forces. We talked later about the enduring nature of war.




My first cousin, once removed, Sarah Bur Gillespie, came to visit my three sisters and me in Jeanne's Baltimore living room. Sarah has the daunting task of monitoring infectious diseases in the 114 federal prisons around the country. She told of going sleepless some nights recently worrying about the spread of tuberculosis among groups of prisoners in varying places around the country. At this time, though, she believes that she and her assitants have brought the situation under control.
Who is this wonderful family? I officiated at the wedding of Kevin O'Reilly and Carol Beck in September of 1986. Here they are in front of their Baltimore home with their three wonderful children, high school boys John and Andrew and their fifth grader daughter Ann. John and Andrew are members of a Quaker youth group that will hike the Appalachian Trail for three weeks this summer. And Ann is a favorite in the family's church community at Saint Vincent's. The three are blessed to have steady loving parents, Carol who gets things done as a consultant for foundations interested in funding educational projects in the Baltimore school district and Kevin whose architectural skills are put to excellent use at Saint Ambrose Housing Aid Center especially in the hundreds of renovation projects that the Center has undertaken. Kevin and John will go to the Dominican Republic this summer for a week of volunteer work at an orphanage.

NEW EDIT

On the day of this photo, Kevin told me a story about his recent trip to a reunion of his class of architectural majors at Notre Dame University. "My two boys think I'm dimwitted and only got lucky to marry someone with real wisdom and a career. In any case they consented to go with me to my Notre Dame reunion and we drove out there together. After that long ride we got off the Interstate and wound through the suburban neighborhoods on the last miles. We could see the gold dome in the distance but when we made the final turn onto Saint Joseph Drive, the manicured campus unfolded in front of us and the gold dome appeared in the evening sun. My boys looked at me and one said, "Holy crab, dad, you went here?"