Dorothy Day by Fritz Eichenberg

In our living room we have a wall with artistic portraits of two persons we consider saints and important persons in our lives. One is Blessed Frédéric Ozanam, a young college student in 19th century France that was the founder of the St. Vincent De Paul Society, which serves the poor and those in need and to which we belong. The other is a drawing by Fritz Eichenberg of Dorothy Day, the co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement. The portrait of Frederick was purchased in Paris, France after we had visited his tomb. The drawing of Dorothy Day was given to us by Edgewood College as an award for our contribution to peace and community in 1994. Also both my wife and I were privileged to have met Dorothy Day.

I wanted to add to the wall of saints the picture I took in Guatemala of our friend Lorenzo Rosebaugh. After he was killed in Guatemala the picture was used by various media to portray this holy man, who had married my wife and me. I printed an 8 ½ X 11 copy of this picture and wanted to hang it on this wall of saints in our living room. My wife said no, that it did not fit with the other two portraits. So I put it in the dining room with a number of other pictures. Tonight my wife asked me if I could make a smaller version of the picture to match the size of the other framed pictures in the dining room. As we were talking we both realized that the reason the picture did not fit in on the wall of saints was because the other two pictures were artistic portraits that were in matted frames. We decided that if the picture was smaller and matted in an 8/12 X 11 frame it would fit well on the living room wall with the other two pictures. So now we will have three saints on the wall that play meaningful role in our lives together.

I am now reading the book “The Duty of Delight, The Diaries of Dorothy Day.” I read a couple of entries in her diary in 1976 where she threatened not to send any more Catholic Worker papers to Marquette University , here in Milwaukee, if they accepted a Rockefeller Foundation grant for the Catholic Worker Archives. Marquette said they would turn down the grant and Marquette is still today the home of the Catholic Worker archives. I wondered what that was all about so I wrote my friend at the MU archives and copied my friend, Jim Forest, a writer of Dorothy’s biography and Robert Ellsberg, the editor of this book, with a few questions.

Robert Ellsberg wrote back explaining that Dorothy, as an old labor radical, believed the Rockefeller fortune was derived from exploitation of the worker and in the spirit of the Catholic Worker wanted nothing to do with it.

I first met Dorothy Day in 1967 when I was a graduate student at Marquette and she came to speak at the university and stayed with my friends, Mike and Nettie Cullen, the co-founders of the local Catholic Worker House of hospitality, Casa Maria. So I had asked in the letter what they thought Dorothy would think of the fact that Marquette University today hosts four departments of the military that teach war and values contrary to the Catholic Faith. Robert Ellsberg wrote back that she believed Catholic Universities were too tied up with the military and had “refused honorary degrees from Marquette or any other Catholic university.”

Dorothy Day’s place on the wall of saints took on a new significance and gave me all the more reason to be part of the Marquette University Peace Action, MUPA, movement to rid Marquette of military training.

All three persons on the wall of saints relate to my everyday life. More stories about Lorenzo, Frederick and Dorothy in life today to come.

Comments

(:commentboxchrono:)