Abstract
The oral history interview with Father Joseph McNulty, conducted on October 12, 2003, captures his reflections on the events of September 11, 2001, and their impact on both his personal experiences and the community of Tremont, Cleveland. Father McNulty describes witnessing the attacks while attending a Catholic Charities Conference in Newark, New Jersey, and discusses the subsequent outpouring of support and solidarity within the Tremont community, particularly among local churches. He addresses the challenges faced by the community in the aftermath, including economic impacts and responses to rising tensions, while also highlighting the efforts made by the community to foster unity and compassion. The interview further explores the role of faith, the responses of local institutions, and the ways in which the tragedy influenced the social and cultural dynamics of Tremont.
Interviewee
McNulty, Father Joseph (interviewee)
Interviewer
Evans, Sean (interviewer)
Project
Tremont History Project
Date
10-12-2003
Document Type
Oral History
Recommended Citation
"Father Joseph McNulty interview, 12 October 2003" (2003). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 223020.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1316
Transcript
Sean Evans: Where were you on September 11th, 2001?
Father Joseph McNulty: “On the actual day that it happened, I was in Newark, New Jersey, right across the Hudson River. And I saw on television first, the first plane that hit the building. Then from the balcony I saw the second plane hit the building. I remember we had no concept of what was going on. I was due to fly out the next day. We were at a Catholic Charities Conference there. My brother Dennis, from this neighborhood also, and his sister-in-law, and my sister-in-law Jill were there. Dennis called me in my room and told me to turn on the TV and I saw what was happening. I went to the window to look and I couldn’t get over. I was watching the smoke. It looked at first like a plane had accidentally hit that building. And then I saw another flame go up. And from the television I could tell a plane, although I didn’t see the plane had come by to do it. But what was remarkable was almost immediately the emergency vehicles from New Jersey were already on their way over. They were on their way over when the first building got hit. They just started immediately and you could see ambulances, complete fire, other emergency vehicles were crossing over the Hudson to go over to New York to help them out immediately. We were left there, of course. All our flights were cancelled. But, the Catholic Charities people of Patterson, New Jersey; their employees all have cars from their diocese, they gave us all their cars to drive home. So we all …just a wonderful way of sharing. When I got back here to Cleveland I found out the same thing was going on here. People tried to respond in any way they could. And Frank mentioned some ways. There was a, the um, people gathered to pray in the Church. They called and just wanted to come into the Church to pray. They formally gathered in Lincoln Park and did a prayer service. There was the tolling of the bells at certain times set by the Diocese. They took up collections to try and help the people involved. And even among the very poor, like in the hunger center especially, some of the poor came and they immediately began contributing little bit of money; 50 cents, a dollar, whatever they could towards the tragedy that happened. Tremont is an area filled with churches. And it’s probably one of its greatest assets that people don’t talk about very much. But just about all the churches became involved together; in the vigils at night, in the prayer and then in the collections of money to try to offset any type of problems that could be going on. Now some of them allied themselves immediately with a particular church in New York and what they were doing. Others, as we did, sent the money through Catholic Charities, USA to the people in need there. And then, some of the initial effects were both good and bad for us. Like, as a church, as you already know, we depend very heavily on donations for our survival, both as a church and as a hunger center. During this time, our donations went way down as people tried to respond to their need. So, the response that way was wonderful. The response in individual churches was also unique to that kind of church. Now St John Cantius is primarily a polish community that gathered. Their response was one of real prayer, holy hours, sometimes in Polish, constant prayer for the people there. The odd thing about the neighborhood…there aren’t that many police, or fire individuals living in the neighborhood, but some belong to our church. Many belong to our church. Many of them left Cleveland and went up to help in any way that they could, if they were able to get away. Now how did it affect the people themselves in the weeks that followed? Well there’s different ways. There was many things done in the schools. Now as you know, or you may know, St. Augustine’s is part of Metro Catholic Parish Schools, so we had a number of prayer services there. Again, efforts by the children to raise funding, to offer toys to families who’s fathers had died, things like that. They did that. In addition, OLA St. Joseph’s Inter School for special education kids, is a school we take care of. And they’re in this neighborhood. And they would constantly, they brought for one week, every day they brought a different toy. There’s only 80 kids in the school. To be given to somebody who might need it in New York. Now some of those toys later on were distributed to other needy children since many of the ones in New York had responses made. And some of the toys weren’t the very best to get, but they still did that. There was, on the other hand, the safety alert throughout the country, if you might remember? There a heightened awareness of things. But I couldn’t get over how every strata of society, the very poor, who we see every day; people with disabilities, the deaf, the blind, those groups. How they were especially aware of the suffering of other people and tried to do something, maybe very little, to respond to it. So that was kind of the aura around Tremont. Sister Grita mentioned before when you spoke to her. Now some people were not affected by it personally at it all. They either didn’t have children old enough or they didn’t, or they still went to work everyday and things were normal. I think there’s a percentage of people who fell into that category. They were supportive of efforts made, but probably wouldn’t go to a prayer service, and they more than likely would not do something, become involved in something in terms of this or even contribute something towards it. Not that I think they were against it, it’s just it wasn’t for them something that touched their lives. And I would say, there’s a certain amount of people who move into the neighborhood newly, into some of the newer homes. And then some of the people who lived here maybe 5 to 10 years, but one man said this to me, he said, ‘Well, thank God it didn’t happen here.’ I said, ‘Yeah but, it could have happened here. I mean, this is small, there’s no large buildings here. And they would not have had the effect that they wanted. But other things could happen here too.’ And he said, ‘I know but, I’m just glad it didn’t happen here. As long as it didn’t bother me, it’s all right with me.’ I think there’s a percentage of people like that. I think they were the minority of people. We might be taking, in this neighborhood, maybe about an eighth of the people. And they would, they really thought completely different than the majority of people in the area felt. Which I also think people with strong ethnic binds and people with disabilities were especially aware of how bad the situation was in response to it. Now that was the effect on people. And your studies may show that during this time, financial effects happened too. Obviously charities, monies went down because more money was going there. That was one effect. But another effect is like the selling of homes. This is been a big area for the last 10 - 15 years in just selling homes for very large amounts of money. Especially around the park. In fact, we were offered at one point, $320,000 for the rectory. I was all set to sell. The Bishop didn’t think that was a good idea. But anyway, during that time, the selling and buying of homes took a real dive. First of all, right after the initial day, then the next several months. And although it’s recovered, and they tell us that the buying is up, it’s more difficult to sell a home now in Tremont than say before 9–11 definitely. Definitely. You can also argue that the economy, when it went down, that effected it as well. That may have too. But it’s just very interesting, some people seem to feel that 9–11 made them think about more important things. Than the home they were going to buy, or the money they had and they began to become a little bit more frugal because they were more aware of the needs around them. So I think to some degree that happened because people were more aware of the great need, or a solidarity, or assistance to people. So I think some of that came through. And I think some of it was just that the economy was affected in such of a way that people did no longer have the desire or the need to come forward for buying of homes. But right now it is so more difficult time. I’ve noticed some homes have given up selling now, they’re renting them at this stage. Another effect, and I said our own donations went down. They went down for two reasons. One is, I think because people were donating more, to the situation. But also, I think, as the economy went down as well. Which happened after 9–11. During that time I think our donors went down as well too. Not because they didn’t want to give, they just didn’t have the money to give. And we depend primarily on people sending 25 dollars or 50 dollars or 10 dollars. So they went down a lot during that period as well. I think some good things. I think generally as a community people seem to be more aware of the value of the human life and each person around them. And I think more aware that their gifts and what they had is needed in the country around them. So. That’s an initial, real short answer there.”
Sean Evans: “That’s pretty much what I was looking for. Along with that the, the church down the street, Saint Andrew Kim, there was mention from Frank that there was a member of that parish who perished.
Father Joseph McNulty: “Yes, she died in I believe the second plane when it attacked the particular building where she was working. She grew up in the neighborhood here for approximately, up until 15 years ago. The Korean Catholic Church met here on our grounds. They used to have the early mass. When I heard about one of them dying, but the family told me immediately that she was one of the kids that came to religious education. We always said the children’s mass over there, because it was always in English. So, and I knew her parents and the families over there. They took it very, you and I would consider it very beautifully, very stoically. There was a rather large crowd that gathered for the funeral. They did not, they felt the sadness, but at the same time, they did not show what I expected; which was the real anger, the real revenge seeking that sometimes you find. And it makes sense too, because you’re badly hurt. They’re very gentle about it. But it really hurt and it deeply hurt that community. A very small community. It’s like a family. It’s like losing one of your favorite people. And that’s how they felt about it. That was the only loss that I know of officially of people living directly in what you and I would call the Tremont area. And she didn’t live in the Tremont area, but her church was located here.”
Sean Evans: “Okay. Was the funeral held at the church?”
Father Joseph McNulty: “It was held at Saint Andrew Kim. Well, what they did, as you know the problems they had finding bodies. They eventually did something I believe with ashes. And I don’t know how much of her body they really found. I think they tried to keep that pretty quiet in terms of the family. But they waited a good 3 weeks before they could do the funeral. They really waited to find out for sure if she was dead. She started off by being missing, and then they had to go from there.”
Sean Evans: “Was there a like a, say for the funeral, was it open to the public? A little more than just that parish coming forward, or were there other members of say your parish?”
Father Joseph McNulty: “Our parish came forward with them because we’ve always been sister parishes to them. And then other people from the churches in the neighborhood came. I would say more than you would normally get at a funeral by far. And so I would say about half of the people were from their church, the other half were people who visited and offered their sympathy. They had a nice wake before the funeral right in the church. Many of these people came in and offered their sympathy that way. Because it’s a small church, so to fit everybody in was pretty hard to do that.”
Sean Evans: “Basically from what I’ve been getting through this interview and with Frank was that, my education on the Tremont area is very limited, but from my understanding now is being its such a diverse area, it’s pretty tightly knit between the parishes. When one parish needs something, the other parish has it, it’s basically they can go and get it.”
Father Joseph McNulty: “Generally. Especially 5 particular churches. Saint Augustine, Our Lady of Mercy, Saint John Cantius, The Pilgrim Congregational Church and Zion United Church of Christ. Those 5 are the pivotal churches of this neighborhood. They work together. They plan things together. Like we do a thing called, in fact, last year we did a Lenten program based on ways in which we can bring peace to the world. We do other things the Wednesday nights of Lent. We do an early morning Easter service. We do a Good Friday service in the afternoon together. We do things like; they assist us as we try to provide for the poor, especially on the big holidays. We do a Thanksgiving service. Things like together. Those 5 are the pivotal 5. At times the other churches join us. Like sometimes the Orthodox churches join with us. Occasionally, very rarely, but sometimes the Baptist churches do. But I would say in terms of the conscience of the neighborhood, in responding to any needs, you’re correct. It’s a church based neighborhood. It’s not always advertised that way. You’ll notice many times the advertising will be about the residences here, the fine restaurants that have come here. But I think as a neighborhood, the conscience of the neighborhood, and the guide of the neighborhood are the churches. Especially those 5. Because they really work close together, and they all claim to have the majority of their people living in the area. So they would be the strongest.”
Sean Evans: “All right. Along the lines of helping, what did Bishop Pilla, did he give a message to the Priests or Pastors for the parishes; did he give guidelines on how to…say if there was someone in the community that came up to you, how do you educate them on what happened, and help them deal with the hurt, or..”
Father Joseph McNulty: “Well, I think first of all, any time you have some tragedy like that happen there’s a certain amount of Catholic though, Christian ethics that touches all of that. So, a lot of what the Bishop emphasized, and what we emphasized was much more centered around ways of consoling those who were really hurt, or consoling our parish for the pain it felt. Trying to deal with the fact that there’s so much pain in the world that we have to look at this tragedy from two points of view. First of all the horror of what happened and that people could actually do something like this while taking their own lives. And then second, sometimes the pain of the people who caused it, what they must feel, if they felt they had to do something this horrible. Not just to the United States, but to everything that the Twin Towers represented, which is far more than the United States. I know at the mass at the Korean Church, one of the things they pointed out was there was a huge percentage of Koreans, a good number of Koreans, who died in that. But they also talked about the Chinese and the Japanese and the Asians and Africans, all of whom worked in that building, were not United States citizens, and they died too. So I think his message was one of sympathy for the horrible pain we all went through. And then second, an awareness that even that pain was caused by somebody else’s pain. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could alleviate both? Both anyone who would, any type of terror in the world, and then any type of a pain that’s so horrible to human beings that they resort to things like terror. Those seemed to be his two messages. And he’s very good at things like funerals and areas like that, and he responds very strongly to individuals and groups as they went through their suffering. And I found that many, many, most of the churches did as well. I don’t know what you yourself found in your own home parish, but I know that most seemed to respond pretty strongly to that.”
Sean Evans: “Pretty much, I didn’t know if the common goal was to alleviate both hurts. How did Saint Augustine, how did it reverse that after the initial attack, the negative attitude towards say a different religion. Was there that, you don’t want to say that extreme hate, but just that ‘How can they do that to us? What did we do to..”
Father Joseph McNulty: “Well like most inner city neighborhoods, we have, I’m just guessing just in the Tremont part of our parish, I’d say there’s about 7 stores run by Palestinians, Arabs. Now, what helps, is that in most cases we knew these individuals, these people. And the normal person was somehow able to distinguish between a terrorist and a person of the same nationality. But not everybody was. Sometimes, at the little store right nearest to here, to our church, which is called Tremont Store, the owner there is from Jerusalem. And he’s Moslem. He and his family migrated from Jerusalem, that’s where they live. And people came into his store and told him horrible things like, ‘I see your relatives did this sort of thing.’ Now where those people were all from I don’t know. But he also had people stopping by and telling him they knew, they could make those distinctions. Just like, I being of Irish nationality, and having a great sympathy towards some of the aspirations in Northern Ireland, at the same time cannot accept the taking of human life by somebody acting out. So, I think that’s where he comes from. He told me one day that he’s sometimes so bitter over the living conditions his family goes through but he would never ever take away lives especially of Americans who’ve always been good to them. Even though they don’t always agree with the policy of our country, depending, they have great respect for the country. Above all for the people. He can’t imagine somebody attacking the people. Now one of the things that I did notice people did, they deliberately went out of their way to go over to these places and offer sympathy. People that I know of, from here. And they made that a part of their particular plan that they would do that. Was there hatred? Did we have…. We did not feel as a parish we had to take on the issue of Islam as a good religion or whatever, because I think our people responded pretty well. As a general neighborhood I think we did, but it’s again, one of the problems about Tremont is as you know, it’s a good way to cut into downtown because all freeways lead in here. All of our churches have people come from all over. And into our neighborhood comes people from all over, especially going to the restaurants or to the bars. So you get somebody who’s a little bit inebriated, what are some of the last places that are open at night? These little stores. So they’ll go in there, and they would say things at times. And we’re not sure those people are from the neighborhood as such. But one of thing, I did think that people went out of their way to try to offer sympathy and understanding. Now I notice in the Church School of Religion, and in OLE Saint Joseph’s and in our Metro Catholic, we spoke about what Islam was, what it’s teaching was, what the Koran says, and what it apparently doesn’t say, and that these people were terrorists. And one of the things we were able to do in a couple of the classes was compare them with some of the fanatics that were in Christianity. And when you think of some of the groups that developed, where they took their own lives or gathered guns together to overthrow the Government. And even in something like Oklahoma City, we’re pretty sure that those two individuals had some sort of fanatical religious outlook in blowing up that building. So we know that it even happens to us. Oklahoma City too was a good comparison many people made. So they would not forget that it was individual Americans who caused that horrible tragedy to all those people, and something they are still recovering from over there as well.”
Sean Evans: “I see. Was there any situation of residents in this area that were in the military, that had to leave stateside.”
Father Joseph McNulty: “Actually I don’t recall anyone in this neighborhood having to leave. Which is kind of an interesting thing. I’m not sure why. Of course, don’t forget, you have a lot of older people living here of ethnic backgrounds. You have a lot of people who are very poor, especially in the housing projects, and they tend normally not to be currently in the service. We have a lot of people who are veterans of the service that we run into. Again, especially in the hunger center we do.”
Sean Evans: “What was their reaction then?”
Father Joseph McNulty: “The hunger center people were very, they were overwhelmed by it. They felt the same pain. And again, we have the struggle, many of the Vietnam veterans when they left, they came back, they never really made it back. And a lot of them come here for meals. We have people from the Gulf war to my surprise. The first Gulf war, who have bad effects. And here I thought there couldn’t, they had hardly any involvement I thought. But they felt the effects. And then we have people from the other wars too. But they’re older now for the most part. You know, those especially, the Vietnam vets especially felt the pain of it all. And for some, it was a remembrance back to their own pain and it was a rough time for them afterwards. In fact, we kept the hunger center open later on all those days just to have people there to talk to them, if they wanted to talk. The few people in the neighborhood that are in the service were out of the neighborhood in service areas at the time and many of them ended up going over there. In fact right now there’s two Hispanic individuals who are in Kuwait and serving at different times in Iraq. They had joined the service for all sorts of different reasons. They joined the service primarily for a career, for a job and they’re over there at this point. I also think people began very quickly to make the distinction between individual soldiers and sailors and people involved and the government; our government and every body else’s government. They’re kind of very proud of people’s response. They’re not always proud or they don’t always agree with the government’s structure, depending on the situation. Whether it was Afghanistan at one point, if you remember, that was a real main point at the beginning and that’s still going on, or Iraq. But, now, other than that, you’ll notice as you went up and down Tremont they have all the flags there too. That was another Tremont response. Came a little bit later. Took them a while to get the, they thought they could just put the flags up the next day. They forget, nobody had any flags. Also you have to pay for flags, don’t just go and get them. So, it took a while to get them involved.”
Sean Evans: “Frank touched on that a lot, the visual; driving down the streets. The thing I compared to that was. If you ever saw that commercial on TV, showed a neighborhood of just houses and they said ‘Before 9–11’. And they had like maybe 1 or 2 flags. And then they said ‘After 9–11’. And there were banners and everything. And they said, “This is what happens.” It sort of touched base with everything becoming united.”
Father Joseph McNulty: “If you wanted somebody to really go against your cause, do something horrible, that would go against your cause. And somehow, terrorists never get that. They never believe that.”
Sean Evans: “It was possibly the worst thing the do was this. Because this just united….”
Father Joseph McNulty: “And not only does it unite, it allows whatever elements in society are angry or whatever to suddenly take over. Even our society. The anger gets real strong. Where as, if they had never done this, but instead maybe came to us and said, ‘You know the world is horrible out there. You have to do something about it.’ We might have been more willing to do that. At least I think so.”
Sean Evans: “Absolutely. I agree with you on that. Along with the, you said you have an elementary school that was, had ties to the parish. Did the children do anything special like write letters?”
Father Joseph McNulty: “They wrote letters and both OLE Saint Joseph and our special school wrote letters and did drawings that they sent. And also, they did it to two different groups. Children…I often wonder if these letters get there. Well, they did for Afghanistan, if you remember in Afghanistan; that was a real quick action, if you remember. So they did it to many of those children. That was at right at the initial thing. And they also gathered toys and sent toys. And Metro Catholic did the same thing. They did it by individual rooms. And in some cases they got responses back from some, from somebody representing children. Most of it probably went to wherever the Red Cross does with the material itself.”
Sean Evans: “Do you remember particularly what your Homily was after that in that you were actually in the general area?”
Father Joseph McNulty: “My Homily, my birthday was September 14th, so I happened to get, I remember that Homily. Basically what I spoke about was, I asked them to remember one of the things that we hold onto, and the beauty of believing is that we believe that Christ, that God creates us for life, forever. And that Christ died for all of us, so that we, in praying for the people who died, to be very much aware that their bodies die, but the person doesn’t die. And second, part of that, is God never forgets the goodness of people shown to others. So all the people, the wonderful people who responded, to think of them. So first I wanted them to think of those who had died and to realize that they still live; and those who responded and tried to help in various ways. You know God never forgets that. They are responding in the law of love. And then finally, while trying to get rid of the wrong that caused it, not to judge all the nations of the Middle East as equal and all the peoples as equal. Maybe the nations, maybe you could, I don’t know, but the people. And that some of the great individuals, great people who help us in different ways, some of the great doctors over here at Metro and other places, are Arab Americans and they have given so much to make our society better. It’s so horrible that this mess continues to be, but to make that distinction. So that was basically the Homily itself. And strongly most of us tried to really point out the fact that what was overwhelming to us, was the, like again the churches being open, people coming in to pray, people taking time to go out of their way, and then people getting in their cars and just driving off to New York to help out. We couldn’t get over the goodness of people in a time like that.”
Sean Evans: “I see. With the parishioners in Lincoln Park, was briefly talked about it, how did it play out towards the community. What was done to make it special, to answer questions, or to even just give the time for people to get together just to talk about that current event?”
Father Joseph McNulty: “Well as you recall, what I said to you earlier was that in this neighborhood there are many, many churches, but there’s 5 churches that particularly seem to plan things and are pivotal churches. Saint Augustine, Our Lady of Mercy, Saint John Cantius, Pilgrim Congregational Church and Zion United Church of Christ. These are the 5 that got together to do the planning of that particular prayer service. And what they basically agreed to do was that a minister from each church would take a scripture and follow it by a prayer. There would then be moments of silence and moments of hymns. And that’s the way it all worked. My own effort was to structure in on Saint Paul’s very beautiful section of his letter to the Corinthians, in which he says, ‘But if I have all the gifts that there are, but have no love, it will do me no good whatever.’ And then I just prayed that we would, no matter what we did in response to this, no matter what we did in terms of helping people or going after the terrorists, we would do everything based on love. Most of the other responses were similar to that. It was a very quiet crowd of people and it was a people that really truly prayed during that time. That was a very beautiful example of prayer.”
Sean Evans: “With the aftermath of 9–11 and the Tremont area coming together and uniting, trying to give a helping hand in any way possible, let’s look at the future and see to moving forward of this area. How did this event create something new and better in the area?”
Father Joseph McNulty: “I think one of the effects of it was, there was an effort even before hand to begin, there’s always an effort in this neighborhood to bring, to work things together. For many, many years, and I’m here 31 years, for many, many years we had all these separate Tremont organizations. They, like Tremont West, a developmental corporation, the Office of Economic Opportunity, the Merrick House, settlement house, Tremont Organization against Hunger, etc.; there were all these different community groups that always worked all by themselves. Now, in the few years before this incident, there was more and more efforts being made to change that, including the development of a thing known as a Festival in the Park once a summer, to try to bring people together. There was an effort made of a thing called the Art Walk, once a month people go from restaurant to restaurant or art gallery to art gallery, and they’ll see various art works put up there. And then other things began to follow. Once 9–11 happened, I think the effort was made to bring people together even more. This past summer we had the Ohio Ballet perform in the park. We had a couple movies, historic older movies, shown in the park. We had the Festival itself that takes place, takes place now two days and we had in addition to it a thing called A Taste of Tremont, where you went around and tasted all the foods from different restaurants. We have increased the Art Walk to different places that it goes to. There’s a special time now in September where we invite people to visit various homes or churches, etc. in the neighborhood to get kind of an idea of us. There’s an effort being made now to redo Lincoln Park itself so that it will be more inviting and more people will be involved in terms of it. So I think there is that effort that’s being made to bring us more together instead of us being very separate. Now remember whenever you do efforts to bring people together you also have things that work against them. For whatever reason that happens. This past year as Cuyahoga County struggled with the women’s shelter, we had an opportunity, they looked at our building, to see whether or not they would put it in the 2nd or 3rd floor of our building, 3rd or 4th floor of our building they would put the women’s shelter. And most people supported very strongly the idea that women and children could have a place, secure place in a pretty safe neighborhood. But some people objected, and gave a real hard time to it because their fear was that people, maybe with criminal past would come into our neighborhood, and who knows, affect something in the neighborhood itself. So, that minority was strong enough that the councilmen would not go ahead with okaying it. Without that okay, you can’t go ahead and do it. And but then good also came from that because immediately Sister created, members of our staff formed a women’s group. Which is still working to make sure the women finally get a really good women’s shelter. So I do find, every now and then, in this post 9–11 world, you’ll have people working against the common good where they’ll want to just safeguard themselves so nobody will get at us. Other people have become more and more open and work very hard to bring the community more and more together. You know both of their fears and both of their worries, but I think ultimately the only real response is something that 9–11 is what you do to build the community now. So that, you know, an individual living in your community who has all sorts of problems may find that solution within that community, instead of finding some other horrible way to act out. We still have, every day in this country, acts of violence taking place. Just as, they may be in a smaller scale, but they are terroristic activities. Sometimes done by individuals who have gone over the edge or just life has overwhelmed them. I guess part of the hope of people in this area is that by supporting each other, especially being aware of those who are suffering, we can alleviate some of that. We even think, for our hunger center to really be successful, it can only be successful based on a thing that’s very important to you – the involvement of other people. It’s when the people who are poor or homeless see the response of the larger community, people come in and volunteer, they do all sorts of things for them. The big, big celebration we do on Thanksgiving and Christmas. All of that’s meant to teach that we are one family and that when one of us in need we are going to respond to it. And I think that’s the best way of responding to 9–11. Not to become divided or upset or angry or hurt, all of that’s going to happen, but to look for ways to become united so that no one is left out. Everyone is somehow included in the service that they need, either giving it or receiving it. The other thing about Tremont, and services like ours, we gather people from all over, they become part of the Tremont family even if they don’t live here, the way they have really contributed to make this a better place. I think Tremont is very beholding to many people who live outside our area that made this part of Cleveland a beautiful place to live in because of their own sacrifice and their own help. And many times when we’re not sure where our next dollar’s going to come from for the hunger center, these are the people that respond to keep us going.”
Sean Evans: “Exactly. Plus not only that, a good example of that is how my grandma lives 15 miles away and we come down. On the way in here, I was driving, I took a wrong turn, I came north on Scranton over by Saint Michaels and I took a right on…anyways..coming north on Scranton I took a right down the side street called Black south of here and on the bridge, you know underneath, I saw the pillars and there are maybe 15 different flags of different nations that are painted on those pillars. It caught my attention, and it wasn’t just the United States, Canada, it was countries from all over the world. Now was done by an artist who came in?”
Father Joseph McNulty: “It was done by the youngsters, probably under the direction of an artist, as part of a summer program where they’re paid to work for the city. But what they did, those particular ones represent nationalities of people living, some of the nationalities of people living in the neighborhood and the interesting thing about them is they have not been destroyed.”
Sean Evans: “That’s what caught my attention.”
Father Joseph McNulty: “Because the best way you can destroy anything is something that’s hidden like that.”
Sean Evans: “Sure, something that’s in the shadows. Absolutely. Are there more things like that throughout this area that ..”
Father Joseph McNulty: “One of the areas that you don’t see as much but is really is a sign of the same thing is the gardens here. Like there’s a garden behind our school building that was built by and maintained by Saint Noel’s parish and our parish: that’s our sister parish from Willoughby Hills. We do a garden every year together that probably keeps our hunger center going, and many of the poor going. There’s another several other gardens throughout the area, and it’s done for the same purpose, to provide food and stuff for the area. Again, that really increased after 9–11. We were the only garden, but then after that, other people began gardens as well as a way of producing food at least for people. Again to unite us more together, try to maybe attack hunger, but also to again bring people together as a community, as a family.”
Sean Evans: “Now would that be, just for my understanding, you would use these gardens as to help yourself, your community, and use your expendable money, other goods, to send away?”
Father Joseph McNulty: “Yes that was the outcome. And then, I think you know that during the time that people sent money, there was a problem there where money wasn’t really getting to the right place, there were various stories. Well most of ours got there, we think, pretty well because it went through Catholic Charities for the most part. But there were some problems people had with that, but that was typical of everyone else. Another thing I want to point out is, it’s a nationality neighborhood, you know, to begin with so that every now and then you’ll be driving by and you’ll see a Polish flag, lots of Polish flags, you’ll see Irish flags, you’ll see Italian flags. Usually Irish flags are over bars, but anyway you’ll see Italian flags as well, but they will be, they’re very conscious of their nationality and their kind of proud of the fact that they’re Americans of that nationality. I think particularly since 9–11.”
Sean Evans: “So it brought a part your individual nationality, but along with it the Americanized..”
Father Joseph McNulty: “A real respect for it.”
Sean Evans: “That’s great. See here, we touched what the church did. How about children? Did any children come up to you and ask you like…why?”
Father Joseph McNulty: “I think what happened with children, whether it was good, bad or indifferent. People responded so fast, the children before they normally had a chance to respond, yeah children would ask why. Their typical thing would be, depending on their age..teenagers are always into why would God allow that, just like a lot of young people would say. And then I always found myself saying, well God didn’t allow that. Human beings did that. God gave us free will, and unfortunately we can use our free will for good or for bad. And some people will use it for bad purposes. Not just here but in many other ways. And then particularly around the time where we saw on TV how many people died, that type of thing, some of the younger kids had every question in world you could imagine from, ‘Where did they go when they die?’ to ‘Are they good people, will they go to heaven?’. All this sort of thing during that time. I think the younger a person is the more they concentrated on the deaths themselves, the older they are the more they concentrated on “Would did God allow this?’, ‘How did God allow this?’, and ‘How do I respond to this’.”
Sean Evans: “Sure, just with the, they just don’t know yet.” Father Joseph McNulty: “They just don’t know yet.”
Sean Evans: “Is there a large population of children in this area?”
Father Joseph McNulty: “Directly, now our parish takes in Tremont, parts of Clark-Fulton, parts of Ohio City, parts of Denison-Archman and I’d say of all the neighborhoods Tremont has the least but also they have the most, we have two rather large housing developments. Many, many children are in there. And but overall probably the least number of children because we have a number of people who have moved into the area who do not have any children. However, since we have the school, we run Augustine Rainbow camp runs during the summer, there’s never a time here without children. Right now the African children are here. There’s always children around and children do ask the questions and sometimes they give the answers too. A little bit of both.”
Sean Evans: “Sure. Absolutely. With parents of these children, was there anything, a kind of special meeting on say, not only you but teachers or other adults, to show them the way you would explain something ..”
Father Joseph McNulty: “Now that happened at both Metro Catholic and Ole Saint Joseph’s. I don’t know if the public schools did that or not. I’m not sure.”
Sean Evans: “I noticed, in my area, Saint Francis and Saint Charles, my uncles and aunts went and talked to teachers and they were telling them how to relate the material of what happen to the common good. What about teachers? Were you in contact with any teachers?”
Father Joseph McNulty: “Mainly the teachers from OLE Saint Joseph Center for the most part, they were very competent to handle it. Now they, because of the age of most of them, they being in their generally 30’s, 20’s maybe a few in their 40’s. They all had friends and people who were directly, either they were in the service, or something else, they were directly touched. So there you were dealing a lot more of their own individual sorrow and their own individual worry and pain. More so than you did among say with children.”
Sean Evans: “Okay. Was there any kind of candle vigils besides the Lincoln Park prayer service?”
Father Joseph McNulty: “As time went on, there were candle vigils at the beginning in remembrance of the dead, then there were candle like vigils to asking God to bless us in Afghanistan. With Iraq you have two different groups there, as you know, and so you also had vigils, particularly sponsored by Pilgrim Church, really very much against our intervention going into the war. But they were all peaceful. And they were all, again they used with the concepts of light and the concepts of prayer, together. People who were really, who felt we should do this, didn’t normally show their feeling by demonstrations. They did it by just stating their opinion. But I felt that they were very balanced in how they all stated their opinion, either side.”
Sean Evans: “So it was kind of, it was definitely a calm way of showing…”
Father Joseph McNulty: “It’s always been calm.”
Sean Evans: “There was no protests, there was no..”
Father Joseph McNulty: “There was use of vigils. Use of vigils is kind of a different way of doing something similar to a protest, but it isn’t like a protest. It’s much more of a prayer moment. Asking God to give the government wisdom to make the right decision.”
Sean Evans: “I see. Now were those all held at Lincoln Park?”
Father Joseph McNulty: “Generally they make their way, at least if not into Lincoln Park, on the outside of Lincoln Park.”
Sean Evans: “Now you said that there were, there are some veterans within this community. Is there anyone that is able to relate or compare, say Pearl Harbor to a 9–11 and the feelings on that? Is there a comparison?”
Father Joseph McNulty: “I found not so much, not so much, I found that among more of the academic people who we compared it to. I would say the veterans that we work with, compare Viet Nam to that. They would say their fear is that we’ll get ourselves involved in a situation we can’t control, will be overwhelming to us as a nation. That’s how they felt in Viet Nam. They think that’s might be how we would feel too. So that’s basically their reaction. Their reaction is, ‘Yeah but as long as we’re in Iraq, the more dangerous it’s going to be. It’s going to become just like Viet Nam.’ That type of thing.”
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