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Viewpoint With his fighting spirit, Joe performed miracles
By SALLY CUNNEEN
Joseph Mulholland died at age 73 at
his home in Douglaston, Long Island, N.Y., on Feb. 3. If, as in the early
church, saints were declared by popular acclamation, the 500 friends, neighbors
and colleagues who flocked to the funeral of this tough, tender man at St.
Marys Church in Manhasset would have voted him in on the spot.
But not for the usual reasons. Joe didnt fit the profile.
Happily married for 42 years to a fellow social worker, Dorothy, father to
three sons and a daughter, doting grandfather of nine, he was a family man,
rooted in his community and its struggles. The jobs he did so well never
defined him: probation officer, creator and administrator of innovative college
programs, and finally a member of the New York State Parole Board, appointed by
Gov. Mario Cuomo.
Listening to Eugene Fontinell, his longtime friend, deliver his
eulogy, we mourners realized with astonishment that this tireless worker for
minorities, especially ex-prisoners and the disadvantaged, had performed far
more than the number of miracles required for canonization. Because they were
so human, so secular, and delivered with fighting spirit and a
contagious grin, it was only after Joes death that they stood out as the
miracles they were.
The most amazing was his lifelong victory over a serious, ongoing
disability. A childhood bout with polio forced him to wear a heavy brace on one
leg for the rest of his life. At school when they chose sides for sports, the
other kids turned him down, shouting, No cripples! Troubled, Joe
went to his sea-captain father, who told him he wasnt a cripple; he could
do anything he wanted to. Joe believed him.
Together with a deep abiding love of the church, this
determination helped him weather the rejection he received of his teenage
request to study for the priesthood. We cant accept anyone who is
handicapped, he was told. For Joe this was a signal to find other ways to serve
Gods beloved underdogs. He began volunteering as a basketball coach in
St. Teresa of Avila Parish in South Ozone Park, and went on to a 35-year,
unpaid stint as a successful coach in the Catholic Youth Organization League,
the Long Island Press and St. Francis College in Brooklyn. At the funeral, his
son Joshua told us that when he played basketball for St. Francis Prep, he
always had the exhilarating feeling that Joe was playing with him.
Dorothy recalls that at the risk of being ejected, he insisted on
bringing in black kids to play in Catholic Youth Organization basketball. This
was a first step in a lifetime commitment. Joe worked to get many of those
players scholarships to prestigious colleges. In his first job as probation
officer of the Queens Supreme Court, he made extra efforts to know prisoners
and ex-prisoners personally. He soon realized that their chances to enter the
job world depended on their educational opportunities, which were scandalously
low in the early 60s. As intellectual as he was practical, Joe became
involved in setting up and running college programs for adults -- an innovation
at the time. He became the first director of the Search for Education,
Elevation and Knowledge Program, known as SEEK, at Queens College, aimed at
increasing the number of minority students at the City University of New York,
and was personally responsible for bringing more than 100 ex-prisoners into the
program.
When he left the Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge
Program after political infighting developed, Joe transferred his awareness of
the needs of adult learners to Fordham University, where he created and
directed the imaginative EXCEL program, which soon filled with returning
Vietnam vets and working people. But no matter what his job, his interest in
prisoners never flagged. Just one example: As a member of the New York State
Parole Board, he fought for years to gain a pardon for a young mother who had
been given a heavy sentence as a driver for drug dealers, not knowing what they
were doing. His concern for her child made him nag everyone he knew to pressure
the governor for a pardon -- which finally came.
Like Dorothy Day, whom he used to help in the Catholic Worker soup
kitchen, he felt the need for a committed but critical attitude to his church.
At the beginning of Vatican II he arranged lectures in parishes and his own
living room on controversial subjects such as Marxism, feminism and ecumenism.
At Queens College he sponsored a debate between psychologist Erich Fromm and
philosopher John McDermott on the death of God. The large auditorium was
packed, and all the proceeds went to Day.
In the mid-60s when the New York archdiocese transferred
Daniel Berrigan to Latin America, moving this trouble-making priest-poet and
his anti-Vietnam activities offstage, Joe got on the phone to academics,
authors, editors, priests and nuns across the country. A letter appeared in
The New York Times on Dec. 12, 1965, with more than 1,000 signatures,
asking for Berrigans recall. It is hard to know what influence the letter
had, but Berrigan was soon returned to New York City.
The committee Joe formed in the process of sponsoring this letter
became the beginning of an organization, the Institute for Freedom in the
Church. Its prestigious board issued a statement of purpose that began:
We believe there is need for a greater effort toward making the freedom
of its individual members a more visible mark of the Roman Catholic
church. Though the institute no longer exists, it was the forerunner of
groups such as the Association for the Rights of Catholics in the Church, Call
to Action and FutureChurch. Joe knew that political activism was as important
as education in bringing about social change, and he involved himself in many
other political struggles -- including a losing run for a state assembly seat
of his own, and the winning campaign of Mario Cuomo for governor.
As he was about to retire from the Parole Board five-and-a-half
years ago, he had a series of strokes that made it necessary for him to use a
wheelchair. Later injuries and infections made him silent and seemingly
incomprehensive. It was painful to see this humorous, argumentative man now
passive, but it enabled those around him to show what he meant to them.
At the wake, his daughter Raissa told me through her tears that
she was grateful for the time she could sit alone with him, hold his hand and
tell him what a wonderful father he had been. I could never have gotten
away with that when he was well. It was a precious time to me. In his
weakness as in his strength, Joe Mulholland brought out the best in people.
May he rest in peace -- and may his spirit keep goading the rest
of us.
Sally Cunneen, professor emeritus of English at Rockland
Community College, Suffern, N.Y., is the author of In Search of Mary
(Ballantine).
National Catholic Reporter, March 22,
2002
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