Chapter 10: The Winds, The Tides and Gravity

Patrick and Marianne arrive at the only possible solution. Anne and her father confessor do too. Cookie, Sarah, Paul, Anne, Patrick and Marianne find meaning after the war.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It was the night before their wedding.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
This is Tobin.

Speaker 1 (00:02):
And so we got there and mary Anne is in
the kitchen, kneeling down with her head in the oven
and her hair all rolled up in minute made orange
juice cans that she had been saving. Her whole head
was wrapped up in these orange juice cans and she
was trying.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
To dry her here and Sarah and I go to
the fabric store down in Chinatown.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Mary Anne hughes my mother.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
We buy twenty five dollars worth of Irish linen and
some lace that went like square neck, little empire waist
came out and then there was a ruffle down the
bottom and lace around the sleeves and some lining and
it was beautiful. It was beautiful. It was so simple,
It was so beautiful. It was twenty five dollars.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Sarah Tosi was one of the bride'smaids.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
Sarah but tablecloths and made their gowns out of the table.

Speaker 4 (00:59):
But they looked right.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
When Sarah came home with the tablecloths, she called mary Anne.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
To say, look, I don't think the its maids are
going to outshine the breath.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
After Patrick made his announcement at the Paula Center. There
were a lot of fireworks.

Speaker 5 (01:17):
Patrick announced it he was going to get married Christine Truffant,
one of the ogs of the Paula Center and my godmother.
I think if probably there was a challenge in community.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Emotional meetings were held outside the Paulist Center.

Speaker 5 (01:31):
We had a meeting. There was so much he generated
by the discussion too, that it was clear that people
were there that were not happy with this change, and
that they weren't going to go along with it, and
that there would be some kind of schism.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
The community Patrick had built began to split apart between
people who wanted him to be a married priest and
people who just couldn't hang with that level of radicalism.

Speaker 6 (01:56):
But the community saw itself.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
As the church Patrick sister, my aunt Joann, and.

Speaker 6 (02:01):
So they felt that they had the power to call
on him to be the priest. That's what makes liberation
theology so threatening, I think, is the people get to
call on the leaders, do you know. I mean, that's
the evolution of it where you say that the leader
is organic, grows out of the community and is chosen
by the community, not from you know, the hierarchy.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
But they knew this would mean leaving the Catholic Church.

Speaker 5 (02:28):
But everyone probably knew. I think certainly I knew if
we presented that we wanted a married priest and that
we were willing to kind of go with that, that
no hierarchy was ever going to go with that. At
that time was kind of time that you think, well,
things are never going to be quite the same anymore,

(02:49):
and they weren't.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Soon. Half the group that decided to leave with Patrick
named itself the People of Hope, and they moved across
Boston Common to a colonial meeting house.

Speaker 7 (03:00):
So that then they agreed that.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
We would move Floyd McManus.

Speaker 7 (03:03):
They would move with Pat to Charles Street.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
Antobin had been so embroiled in the turmoil surrounding the
Paula Center community she was basically done.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
Yeah, I didn't go with either group. I kind of
had had it.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
So Patrick and the People of Hope walked out of
the red double doors on Park Street, leaving everything they
had built behind. But he still had a two thousand
year old religious organization to contend with.

Speaker 6 (03:30):
He tried to get leaoisized because he wanted to get
married in the church and he couldn't get married as
a priest but the archbishop refused to lasize him. So
therefore Patrick never got leaosized. He was still a priest,
and so therefore that became an issue with getting married,
because then if anyone married them, then they would be

(03:53):
in heresy or something.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
The archbishop told him that anyone who performed the ceremony
would be summarily excommunicated, so he had to get a
little creative.

Speaker 3 (04:03):
The wedding was pot luck. Again.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
Let me remind you of the nobody, all the fabulous food.
Everybody brought everything. A few things were laced with a
little bit of magic oregano.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
Patrick and Marianne invited everyone from both communities, unsure of
how many would show.

Speaker 8 (04:21):
I remember parts of the wedding.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
This is Chrissy or Kristen Hughes, my sister.

Speaker 8 (04:26):
I remember being completely overwhelmed with how many people were there.

Speaker 3 (04:29):
I remember walking into the church with people carrying wedding cakes,
homemade wedding cakes up the steps in big jugs of
wine and cases of beer and big hams. I mean
they estimated maybe seven or eight hundred people there, because
the whole community showed up, everybody.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
Directing everyone from both sides of the Great Schism came
to celebrate Patrick and Mary Anne.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
Was the first time I met his parents was at
the wedding, and you can imagine. I mean, they were
already in their seventies. He was the golden haired boy.
He was the youngest son of seven children of Irish
parents who go in the priesthood, and he's getting married.
They were such I don't know, they were so incredible

(05:22):
to be able to embrace it the way they did.
I remember walking down the aisle and they were to
my right, and I remember catching their eye and just
giving them the biggest smile.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
Marianne's own family boycott at the wedding. Her father, her brother,
her wicked stepmother. None of them could bear witnessing her
marry a priest. It was just too much for them.

Speaker 3 (05:50):
And during the kiss of peace, Patrick's father came up
to me and said, meet your new grandpa. And that
was the relationship that he and I had, like for
the rest of our lives.

Speaker 2 (06:01):
Patrick made the ceremony his ultimate multimedia extravaganza, and it
was just an act.

Speaker 3 (06:07):
It was our act of creation. It was our active celebration.
Putting that together. The music was unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
Then he kicked things off, let's see.

Speaker 9 (06:20):
Hello and welcome to the wedding celebration. My name is Patrick.

Speaker 3 (06:26):
Hughes and.

Speaker 9 (06:33):
We're very very happy that you hear. And as usual,
there's a little bit of confusion because it's kind of
multimedia thing and Floyd isn't around, you know, to keep
us pushing, but he's here tonight. But the big thing
is that, you know, we want it to just kind
of relax and enjoy ourselves and.

Speaker 10 (06:56):
You can.

Speaker 9 (06:56):
We're going to do a little slide show which well
you'll see what it's like when you see it. All right,
Well we're going to start now, so just relax and see.

Speaker 4 (07:13):
Would someone please say that to me?

Speaker 3 (07:33):
The entrance song was Here Comes the Sun, and Patrick
and I put together this slide show. It was us
from birth until we met, and it was two pictures
of us growing up side by side. I think the
last slide of that song was Patrick in a cassock
at the seminary and me holding a brand new baby Kristen.

(07:56):
Those were side by side and everybody cracked up laughing.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
This would clearly be no ordinary wedding.

Speaker 3 (08:05):
And then the next the next song was in My
Life by the Beatles, and I cannot hear that song
and not cry ever. And that song then was when
we met. And then those photographs were all of him
and me and Kristen and Joe and friends from the

(08:27):
Paul Center community.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
When the slide show ended, it was Chrissie's cue as flower.

Speaker 8 (08:31):
Girl, and I remember being at the end of the
aisle and my one job as a flower girl was
to bring the flowers up, and I just dropped him
and ran because I think I was supposed to go
out front. I think Paul was at the end. I
think I just ran to him, like I just was like,
this is insane, Like if this is so many people,

(08:52):
it was overwhelming to me to see how many people
had come to be there for them. I don't think
I understood until that moment what a big deal it
was that they were getting married.

Speaker 1 (09:07):
So Chrissy was very scared and nervous and she wouldn't
come down the aisle. But Joe ran right down the
aisle as fast as he could, and Patrick was at
the end and he just caught him up.

Speaker 3 (09:17):
And you can hear Joe. You can hear him on
the tape of the wedding.

Speaker 5 (09:22):
Same Mommy, there's.

Speaker 3 (09:26):
A great picture of Patrick kneeling down waiting for Joe
to come down.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
It was so great.

Speaker 3 (09:32):
And then Patrick came back up the aisle to get me,
and then he and I walked down together.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
Their friend Michael Hunt gave the homily.

Speaker 11 (09:39):
Even on this night of unimaginable war, when our planes
destroy Asian brothers and sisters, Mary Anne and Patrick have
the courage, maybe the foolish courage, to tell us that
their love for each other extends to all of us
and beyond.

Speaker 3 (09:59):
And in the middle of mike Hans homily, someone had
wandered in from the street, I think, one of the
homeless men that used to hang out outside. And as
Mike is speaking, he yells from the audience, how would
you like to be a Communist?

Speaker 11 (10:18):
Could I just finish?

Speaker 12 (10:20):
Old?

Speaker 3 (10:21):
Place goes silent, and Patrick and I lean over and
say perfect.

Speaker 7 (10:28):
I even I think did a reading at the at
the wedding Floyd that was as very happy. Mary Anne
seemed very happy, just a very happy occasion. I was happy.
I was happy for them.

Speaker 13 (10:41):
But I think that was the first time I met
with Bob Kane, and it was all very kind of
lovey dovey at that time.

Speaker 12 (10:47):
You know, and Patrick looked rapturously happy, and Walsh it
was just very unifying.

Speaker 3 (10:54):
Jim wrote the most beautiful poem, as only Jim could, a.

Speaker 14 (10:58):
Wedding poem for Marianne and Patrick. Jim Carroll, you were
wondering why the spring is not here by now? What
is the warm weather waiting for? The warm weather waits
for a wedding, but not yours. If the gods must
ache their ways through this long age, when the hovering

(11:20):
birds of death fly north with numbers, why should you
go easy? You are children of the war. This most
beautiful poem, face of dawn.

Speaker 3 (11:32):
About what was happening about the other bride and girl Vietnam.
But I remember the repeating stanza in the poem and
the end of it, because when Patrick and I went
on our honeymoon, wo went skiing and we used to
yell to each other up and down the ski slope.
You rainbow, you wiper.

Speaker 14 (11:50):
Cynical ideas, you laughers, you lovers, you small words of God,
you bodies of Christ.

Speaker 15 (11:59):
Amen.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
Amen.

Speaker 10 (12:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (12:17):
Sarah sang bridge over troubled water when.

Speaker 8 (12:21):
You but Sarah, I remember her at the wedding. I
remember her singing and just feeling kind of proud of her,
like because she was so talented. You know when you
see somebody that you love from a distance doing something amazing.

Speaker 15 (12:42):
Yeah, I sang my guts out to Federal ears. Was
it a wedding? Was it tiny?

Speaker 2 (12:49):
Chris and Joe?

Speaker 3 (12:50):
It just was?

Speaker 8 (12:51):
It just felt at once overwhelming and I felt proud
like I was. I maybe even thought like, waiter, are
we famous? Because I think we live in a basement apartment?
Is this what fame looks like?

Speaker 2 (13:08):
The hall was covered in their signature felt banners, these.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
Beautiful handmade banners that would go on the front of
the altar. This beautiful banner which I actually still have,
and it says, if I truly love one person, I
love the world. I love life. And that was really
truly so emblematic of how we felt that by learning

(13:33):
to love one person, deeply love one person, you learned
to love the world and you learned to love life.
We had had, all of us, this incredibly intensive experience
of community and new church and radical politics and living
the social gospel. The whole community came together around this wedding,

(13:56):
around the celebration of unbelievable love. We were creatures of
the community. We came out of the community. We were
part of it, but we were because of it in
so many ways.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
But then they got to the part of the ceremony
where they.

Speaker 3 (14:12):
Would be wet, and we had written our own vows
that were really, really beautiful. We wrote them together.

Speaker 2 (14:18):
Patrick by this point had married plenty of couples, and
in his last act as a Roman Catholic priest, he
married himself to my mother. And he did so with
a little help from Walt Woodman.

Speaker 9 (14:31):
The road is before us. Let the paper remain on
the desk, unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopened.
That the tools remain in the workshop, That the money
remain unearned. That the school stand mind not the cry
of the teacher, that the preacher preach in the pulpit,
that the lawyer plead in the court, and the judge.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
Expound the law.

Speaker 9 (14:56):
I give you my hand, I give you my love,
more precious than money. I give you myself before preaching
our law. Will you give me yourself? Will you come
travel with me? Shall we stick by each other as
long as we live?

Speaker 10 (15:21):
Marianne, will you be my wife? Yes, Marianne, my friend,
be my wife, and marry.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
Me because I love you.

Speaker 10 (15:40):
And it's as simple as that and as profound as that.

Speaker 3 (15:46):
Patrick, will you be my husband?

Speaker 16 (15:53):
Yes, I will promise to love you and believe in
you with simplicity and tenderness, to put my trust in
you forever, and to comfort you and body and soul.

Speaker 1 (16:05):
I love you.

Speaker 2 (16:09):
And then they kissed, and then there was a confused.

Speaker 3 (16:13):
Pause, and then I remember Patrick turning around saying, we're married.

Speaker 9 (16:23):
We're married, and.

Speaker 3 (16:31):
The place went, you know, the place went wild.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
But Patrick wasn't quite done being a wild haired priest.

Speaker 3 (16:36):
And then Patrick said the mess after we were married,
but immediately after we were married. My last memory of
the wedding is, We've got suitcases, umbrella's slide projectors. I'm
in a wedding down marching down Charles marching down Charles Street.

(16:58):
It was just the greatest it had to have than
the greatest scene to see. It was hysterical.

Speaker 2 (17:04):
Two Boston Irish Catholics on Charles Street in the rain,
a defrocked priest and a divorce a having detonated their
lives into something entirely new upon the earth. While it
can often be said that Irish Catholics are shame based
life forms. God help anyone that gets in the way
of our good time. We are, at the end of

(17:24):
the day still mud savages, stomping through a hard scrabble landscape,
surviving on seaweed and poetry. Brian Denahey is said to
have said of growing up Irish Catholic that it taught
him how to raise Hell. And that's the funny thing
about this bizarre haplow group of hapless human specimens. We

(17:45):
revere what we have decided is sacred, and we detonate
everything else. I'm Brendan Patrick Hughes. This is Divine intervention,
Chapter ten. The winds, the tides, and gravity.

Speaker 17 (18:32):
The wedding was sweet and lovely.

Speaker 2 (18:35):
This is Jim Carroll, who's always been like an uncle
to me, and who has written several fascinating books on
the fate of the Catholic Church. I mean, there were.

Speaker 17 (18:42):
Lots of flowers, lots of happiness, lots of joy, even
though it was complicated, complicated for me. I was still
a priest at the time, still feeling grief that Patrick
had left the priesthood. He may have had harbored the
fantasy that he could still somehow be a priest, but
it was clear that Immusily wouldn't.

Speaker 2 (19:01):
Be Patrick's days saying Mass as a renegade priest were numbered,
whether he knew it or not.

Speaker 7 (19:06):
After a year's experience of being married, I knew that
he was going to be in a better situation or
going to be in a good situation.

Speaker 2 (19:15):
Floyd, who became a high school principal after leaving the church, So.

Speaker 7 (19:19):
I didn't feel quite so guilty after that.

Speaker 2 (19:23):
This church Patrick had devoted his life to changing would
now move on without him. Without Patrick, the team experiment
at the Paula Center was over, but the Paula Center
would never be the same. The church would be another matter.

Speaker 3 (19:42):
Are you a.

Speaker 2 (19:43):
Practice of Catholic man?

Speaker 7 (19:48):
That's all in the definition, isn't it. So for my definition,
I'll say yes, I'm not a practicing.

Speaker 2 (19:57):
Catholic Antobin in two thousand and nine who lived up
the hill from my childhood home and drove a La car.

Speaker 1 (20:03):
I don't think things have progressed very far in terms
of the Vatican. I mean, I think they actually have
regressed since John the twenty third. You know, I think
it's just the water. It was like the water opened
for a period of opportunity, and now has closed over.

Speaker 6 (20:22):
No, No, I am not a practicing Catholic.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
Joanne Hughes my aunt.

Speaker 6 (20:27):
It just represented something that I couldn't hold any longer.
I couldn't stand with the church anymore because I found
the church to be so really destructive in the formation
of women, girls and who they are and how they

(20:49):
understand themselves, and the fact that it continues that even
now politically, socially, personally, the justice is not there. So
I have to stand away from it. But I can
take from the Gospel the idea of God as love,

(21:11):
and I can believe in love.

Speaker 12 (21:13):
I feel like I have stayed and none An Walsh.
I feel like I am a noun in so many
important ways. And that's because I left because I couldn't
be who I needed to be in that time.

Speaker 2 (21:31):
But and feels differently about the church itself.

Speaker 18 (21:33):
You know, I go by church just now and I
say that would make a great laundromat.

Speaker 2 (21:40):
And in the time since these young radicals left the church,
the institution has to say the absolute least, continued down
a very dark path.

Speaker 18 (21:49):
The abuse of sexuality by the institution of the church
is so shameful. I mean, it's just so shameful, and
it was so pervasive, and I think it will be
the end of the church. I think it's how the
church will end, because it hasn't gone away and.

Speaker 2 (22:07):
Then and of course it's all changed.

Speaker 13 (22:09):
Like Anne says to me, now, if you ever said
to some of you are priests and you in jail,
that I think you're a pedophile or something.

Speaker 2 (22:15):
Now, the scandal the church brought upon itself with predatory
priests destroying the lives of children and being protected by
their archbishops can never be forgiven to me for our purposes.
It symbolizes two things. One that power will come to
destroy innocence for sport. And two, after that generation of

(22:38):
radical young Catholics was squeezed out of the organization in
favor of companymen who would go on to commit and
be complicit in atrocities, it feels like that might have
been the last chance for this church to become a
change making force for good in the world, and the
Church blew it by letting these people go. In my

(22:58):
humble and uninformed of opinion, the Church needs to terminate
priesthoods for two generations and just turn over the whole
organization to the nuns.

Speaker 17 (23:13):
One of the reasons the church has been able to
stand against feminism, to stand against the demands of liberals,
has been because the demands haven't been made from inside.
Jim Carroll, that's where the power structure has to be
fought and changed. That's my view, and that's that's not
a revolutionary view.

Speaker 2 (23:31):
I admit that that's the age old question we've been
grappling with for ten episodes. Do you change things from
the inside as a stalwart incrementalist like Patrick and Floyd
at the Paulice Center, or do you change things from
without as a renegade agitator like Anne and Cookie and Paul.
The answer I think is we need both and both

(23:54):
need to work together, as they did so well in
Paul Cooming's Sanctuary. Inside incrementalists are always desperate for pressure
from without to help them tip the scales, and if
each side didn't look at each other through squinted eyes,
we might actually get somewhere. Sociologist Carl Mannheim wrote that

(24:16):
all change is generational change, and if anyone could have
changed things, it would have been these whipper snappers, because
civil disobedience is sometimes the only mechanism we as a
people have, and Anyone who is unsettled or judgmental about
civil disobedience doesn't realize what country they're living in.

Speaker 19 (24:37):
Although the government is always saying, oh, we don't pay
attention to protesters, they pay attention.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
Howard Zinn, whose son Jeff is one of my dearest friends.

Speaker 19 (24:46):
They're they're effected. No matter how they claim that they're
oblivious to opposition. That Nixon became very agitated and worried,
troubled by this out of protest works. Yeah, yeah, it
works in ways that we very often don't understand at

(25:07):
the time because at the time we don't see anything
happening in the government immediately. In fact, this is a
very important characteristic of movements. You do something dramatic, you
have a huge rally, you have three hundred thousand people
go to Washington, DC, and then nothing happens. You don't
see the results, but you don't realize that very often

(25:28):
the results come later. The results are embedded in that
historic moment, in the minds of people and the minds
of decision makers, every protest has an effect.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
These Zany Catholic radicals are outside agitators and inside incrementalists
who decided to historically and faithfully work together, did everything
they could to sabotage the draft becoming accomplished cat burglars
going to jail for what they believed, putting their parents
through the hell of FBI screw me, pitting the church

(26:01):
against the justice departments. And they made it clear to
the US government that on their watch, to quote Jeff
the Dude Lebowski, this aggression will not stand. Man, and I,
for one, can't think of a clearer form of patriotism.

Speaker 13 (26:21):
Institutions to the church among them, they always block change.
I always feel like it's like an image of a
guy sitting in a room with a locked door in
sixteen padlocks, you know, Bob Knaane, And then change comes
along on bad is the door bad? As the door
breaks all locks and goes in, and the guy says welcome.
I know that change never is welcome in the beginning,

(26:45):
and after everybody sees how great it is, then it's welcome.
But it almost has to batter its way in.

Speaker 2 (26:51):
Our friends, Bob Kaine, Ann Walsh, Paul Cooming, Cookie Ridolphie, Sarahtosi,
Howard Zinn, Jim Carroll, Kip Tiernan, Keith forsythe Bob Weed
ex Williamson, Ted Glick, Leanne Mosha, and Patrick and Mary
Anne Hughes were so heartsick for the country they loved,
for the church they loved, and for their fellow man

(27:13):
that they were compelled to put their bodies where their
mouths were. But when it was all over and Sagon
fell and the soldiers came home, they all had to
figure out how life would now have meaning and where
they would find it.

Speaker 20 (27:33):
I had no plans, because I didn't think I could
make plans.

Speaker 2 (27:36):
After her acquittal, Cookie Ridolfie had a new lease on life.

Speaker 20 (27:39):
I wrote to the State of New Jersey and I
told him I was a defendant in the case, and
I said, you know, and I was trying to change
the world by breaking the law. And I've learned so
much from this case, and I still want to make
a difference in the world justice blah blah blah, but
I want to do it now the right way, with
an education, And would you give me a scholarship? And

(28:01):
they did. They paid my school.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
Cookie ended up going to Rutgers in Camden, which had
been under construction next to the Camden Courthouse when they
did the action, and she even used the construction site
to case the Federal Building, and soon she graduated college.

Speaker 20 (28:17):
I only had one skill when I was acquitted, and
that was a jury work. I became part of the
National Jury Project. At some point I realized I'd been
a defendant, I'd been an investigator in at private Investkuge,
I'd been a jury worker. I had so many jobs,
and I had ever had the power of a lawyer.
And so I decided to go to law school.

Speaker 2 (28:35):
Back to Rutgers for law school.

Speaker 20 (28:36):
So then I became a public defender. Then I met
my current wife.

Speaker 2 (28:40):
Cookie went on to co found the Innocence Network, which
sought exonerations for wrongful convictions. Eventually she taught at Santa
Clara University Law School, and this former South Philly near
Dowell Street tough shaped justice for a generation. She also
stayed close to Sarah Tosi.

Speaker 15 (29:03):
Quiet, rainy evening and courage revered. Hoping flows not easily.

Speaker 3 (29:09):
But it flows.

Speaker 15 (29:12):
When are you coming down? My heart is so full
you could say I've jumped off a cliff, beating the air,
almost defiant, stomping in my hiking boots. What it means,
I don't know where it goes. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (29:26):
Finally, glad.

Speaker 20 (29:27):
Every year on the anniversary of the action, she would
call me, So even if we didn't talk all year,
she'd definitely called me that day and we'd talk anyway.
I don't know what to say about her except that,
you know, like she was really a gift to this
earth and a great loss for me.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
After the acquittal, Sarah returned to Boston and eventually married
before settling on Cape Cod.

Speaker 20 (29:53):
After the actions, she just really withdrew because she married
someone who was not who was very unkind to her,
and she had this beautiful boy, Owen, who I'm still
in touch with.

Speaker 21 (30:05):
Cookie RIDOLFI was on Cookie.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
I went out to the Cape to meet Sarah's son, Owen,
in the house where she raised him.

Speaker 21 (30:11):
Yeah, I have the I have my.

Speaker 14 (30:13):
Mom's guitar on my back here.

Speaker 21 (30:16):
Oh wow, the dings and dongs like you've got like
this big depth and that has been repaired, which she
predated me.

Speaker 2 (30:23):
I think that then this this guitar was in my
in the apartment that they had shared. Must have been
after her divorce. She worked in construction.

Speaker 21 (30:33):
I didn't know much of the history until close to
the time of her passing, when Marianne and a lot
of other folks came around and I got to hear
more of their stories through through an effort to kind
of help my mom remember as well. You know, no
matter what, my mom always believed in doing what was right.
And you know, she always she always stood by her

(30:55):
beliefs and was willing to act on her beliefs and
defend defend people who need to be defended.

Speaker 2 (31:02):
At one point, Owen pulled out a letter that had
been written to her by Bob Weed Ex Williamson.

Speaker 21 (31:07):
This is a letter from Bob Williamson to my mother,
and he sent a few months before she passed. And
among the amazing things he wrote, he said, and if
I could sum up the gifts you have given me,
it is that you showed me, by.

Speaker 4 (31:24):
Your example, how to be funny and how to be fierce.

Speaker 22 (31:28):
Funny and fierce are such perfect partners. They balance and
bring out the best in each other. Being funny makes
people want to be around you, and being fierce means
they'll always remember what you stand for. If you're funny
and not fierce, no one takes you seriously and you
don't make a difference in this world.

Speaker 2 (31:46):
And if you're.

Speaker 22 (31:46):
Fierce but not funny, you'll burn out from the intensity
long before you reach the finish line. Sarah, you are
a shining example to me of fierce and funny imperfect balance.

Speaker 21 (32:00):
That example has saved me many many times.

Speaker 2 (32:04):
Sarah Tosi died on April fifteenth, two thousand and six.

Speaker 23 (32:08):
Much love to you all in the words in the
work Sarah.

Speaker 2 (32:22):
As for Anne Walsh, she took her case against the
DOJ all the way to the Supreme Court.

Speaker 18 (32:28):
I won a Supreme Court superseding indictment the United States
of America versus the Elizabeth Walsh, and it came out
in my favor. I have it right over there in
that bookcase.

Speaker 2 (32:39):
So Anne and Bob could finally tie the knot. Marian.

Speaker 12 (32:45):
Anne and Patrick got married I think in April, and
then the following June we got married.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
They got married at a communal living cooperative called Packard Mants,
about twenty miles south of Dorchester, where Bob had been
living with some fellow clerk.

Speaker 12 (33:00):
It's the first time my family had ever been to
a wedding where we had meatless meatballs and varieties of
pumpkin zucchini bread for the wedding.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
Anne's family living in the Legacy of her war hero father,
where they're celebrating Anne on her terms.

Speaker 13 (33:16):
And then finally, you know, again a big wedding, a
big like your father and mother's wedding, big wedding, all
sorts of people.

Speaker 19 (33:25):
They had pot luck, you know.

Speaker 2 (33:26):
That was that was the time their wedding had a
puppet show and an element of protest towards a defense
contractor Honeywell in the next town.

Speaker 13 (33:35):
And then of course when we got married, the big
deal was that the Canmon people had just quit and
they all came to the wedding. Yeah, and they all celebrated,
and so its a very happy time. There were about
five hundred people.

Speaker 2 (33:49):
And moved in with Bob at packard Man's and then
having never dated anyone, they figured out how to make
up for lost romantic time.

Speaker 12 (33:57):
So as I see it now, it's just like a
very quid period of time. And then the other part
was like a thrilling, hilarious and wonderful, passionate, idealistic you know.
And I think down all the years you sort of
sorted out.

Speaker 2 (34:13):
The war in Vietnam was coming to a close, but
Anne and Bob felt a strong commitment to continue to
burn with the spirit of their times.

Speaker 13 (34:20):
I can remember when I got out of prison, I
was at the kind of a party at the Manse
and somebody said to me, what are you going to
do now? And I said, well, I'm going to think
things over for a while and see what's going on,
you know, and see what.

Speaker 2 (34:34):
I can do. So Packard Mantz became a place that
could be the start of a grand counterculture experiment. By
the time Anne moved to the Mantz, the place was
evolving into more of a commune full of movement people.

Speaker 12 (34:47):
The community was so rich and fine and funny. It
was so alive. It was definitely where you want to be,
like no question, and it wasn't like giving up something.
It was like joining a really good theater troupe or something.

Speaker 2 (35:04):
It became a place for the Catholic radicals to live
out loud as former clergy, and.

Speaker 13 (35:09):
It was a big thing for us that in the
old days when people left religious life or the priestoo
or something, they went into hiding. Almost they were kind
of they couldn't embarrassed by it. You couldn't go back
to the areas where now you left because you saw
something more positive in a sense, and so you weren't embarrassed.

(35:30):
You weren't ashamed. You just said, you know, I want
to go in a different direction, which was sort of
unheard of.

Speaker 2 (35:44):
So Anne and Bob settled into commune life. Mary Anne
and Patrick, meanwhile, had begun a brand new family life.
They could now live out in public. In one kiss,
Patrick had gone from being a celibate priest to a
father of two toddlers.

Speaker 8 (36:01):
He married Mom with two kids, like it was instant family.
He was a priest one day, living by himself, and
then he was married with two kids the next, Like
we saw him at the Poul Center. We loved him.
We did torture him though, like I think I rubbed
his toothbrush on the soul. Joe would stand behind him

(36:26):
and the car pick his nose and wipe it on
his bald spot.

Speaker 3 (36:31):
And Patrick was so unbelievable with Christy and Joe. He
just loved them so much. And the integration of our
the four of us, was such an extraordinary and special thing.
I remember him saying his greatest regret was that he
hadn't been there when they were born. That he just
he was their father, He was absolutely their father.

Speaker 2 (36:55):
They found an Emerson College dorm at one point thirty
two Beacon Street in downtown Boston, where they could live
cheaply as dorm parents. The first order of business was
for Patrick to formally adopt Christy and Jojo and to
become their father.

Speaker 3 (37:07):
And we had this incredible party on the day that
Christy and Joe were adopted. We'd all gone, so there
was maybe twenty five of us, you know, dear friends,
all again from the Pall Center community, and we'd all
gone to the courthouse and they were adopted as a
little ceremony and they'd get lollipops and all that, and
then Patrick had put this unbelievable slideshow together of them

(37:29):
too free to be you and me. It was like
this running slide show all day. But of course he
was also a Justice of the piece. So in the
middle of this party, March is in a wedding, so
he does a wedding. He marries this couple and we
become their wedding party in the middle of in the
middle of the adoption.

Speaker 2 (37:47):
Party, one of Patrick's only sources of income, because lest
we forget, he had taken a vow of poverty and
was starting from scratch, was being a Justice of the
peace and marrying people, often a couple of crazy kids
who decided to a lope.

Speaker 12 (38:00):
And then two strangers would come in and get married,
and they would give your father twenty five dollars, maybe
a couple of times a day. That might happen on
a good.

Speaker 2 (38:08):
Day, but he was no good with money.

Speaker 12 (38:10):
And Patrick frequently would just turn that right over into
two lobster just for himself and Maryam.

Speaker 2 (38:17):
Patrick faced the challenge of building a life for his
sudden wife and two kids, and just as Floyd had predicted,
he left the people of Hope. In his resignation letter,
he implored them to carry on the mission and bring
in new blood. Reading between the lines, his wording suggests
they had already become bogged down and too much conversation.

(38:40):
As for myself, he wrote, I'm feeling a need for distance,
so I'm into a withdrawal thing. I believe this is
good for both the p of h and myself. He
left his role as a religious leader and devoted himself
entirely to family life, and soon Patrick would become a

(39:00):
full blown biological father as well.

Speaker 8 (39:03):
My mom was pregnant. I remember her being super sick,
like horrible headaches, I remember like her laying on the
couch with her long hair like flowing off of the coach,
just like feeling terrible with.

Speaker 2 (39:14):
A baby on the way. Bob and Anne quickly realized
that Patrick and Mary Anne should join their burgeoning beloved
community at Packard Manz.

Speaker 24 (39:23):
Oh well, the mans was beautiful.

Speaker 2 (39:25):
This is my brother Joe Hughes aka Jojo.

Speaker 24 (39:29):
At one point twenty acres and so the original Packer
to stay was just you know, it's a beautiful, big
summer home built to resemble a Japanese lafehouse. It was
a very kind of bucolic and peaceful and tranquil place.

Speaker 8 (39:45):
A real aversion to fall, particularly at the Manz because
the way that the manse was set up like we
lived down deeper into the woods with the meadow out
our front window, but was surrounded by pine trees. So
this su the autumn sun would set and it would
hit the pine needles, which were like orange gold, and
then this beautiful light would h fill our house. But

(40:08):
I found it too too much, so I'd put a
blanket over my head until the sun went down. And
my mom and dad were like, oh.

Speaker 4 (40:15):
My god, she's really nuts.

Speaker 8 (40:18):
She's a great I would be like sitting. I was
like I said down Yet I just couldn't handle it.
It's too beautiful, it was too melancholy.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
Chrissy has also described that autumn sun gleaming off the
pine Duff at the Manse as the visual equivalent of
Harry Nilsen's voice. If that completes the picture, now, Packard
Mance and family life would be a grand experiment in
counterculture living.

Speaker 12 (40:43):
More and more like I see. We did what we
felt we could do to end the war in Vietnam
and to become social change agents in a variety of ways,
and to try to have that inform us as we
moved forward. And right after that we put in to adopt.

Speaker 2 (41:02):
Tron, and and Bob decided to adopt the Vietnamese baby
orphaned by the war, named Tron van Dung.

Speaker 12 (41:09):
I adopted Tron. And when Bob and I drove back
to New York, everybody was there to greet this child
and to care for him and make it a special
And I was taking care of Chrissy and Joe when
your mom and Patrick went out the door to have you.

Speaker 2 (41:26):
This is where I entered the story. Ten days after
Tron arrived at Packard Mantz.

Speaker 8 (41:31):
I was born the day Brennan was born. I know
that there's tons of pictures of it, and I just
remember being like, oh my god, like you were the
cutest because I was seven, so like you were. I
was like the perfect age difference because I was like,
he is mine.

Speaker 12 (41:48):
And the joy that you know, came when Patrick called
to say that Brendan had been born, and how happy
Chrissy and Joe were.

Speaker 8 (41:56):
When Brendan was born is when it like we really
coalesced as a family, because like you were all of ours.

Speaker 2 (42:04):
Patrick baptized me himself in the living room of the
Manse to Morning Has Broken by Kat Stevens.

Speaker 8 (42:10):
And I just remember you with Daddy all the time.
There were always errands. I don't know what the hell
had to go to the dump? How did do this?
How to do that? How did you know? Like always
driving around, and I remember actually being jealous of the
time they got to spend with you. Where have you been?

(42:31):
I've been waiting all this time, and Daddy and Mom
were so like just over the moon.

Speaker 2 (42:41):
My dad never brought us to church growing up. I
had a very secular childhood. The Manse was a magical
place where we had livestock and a pastor in front
of my house and a deep woods for exploring and back.
Anne Walsh was pregnant when I was born.

Speaker 24 (42:56):
You friended, Tron and Kate all arrived on Man's property
within the space.

Speaker 2 (43:02):
Of six months, My brother Joe and so you kind
of filled out.

Speaker 24 (43:05):
You know, there were the big kids and the little
kids and so and you know, that was very fun,
because those are sort of a halcyon days.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
Tron, his little sister Kate, and I grew up together
building forts, digging holes and getting into seventies era childhood hijinks.
And our parents, like all parents in the nineteen seventies,
were making it up as they went along, but with
the added pressure of inventing a counterculture. For instance, we
had a bull in the meadow named Stanley.

Speaker 24 (43:39):
Stanley was very gentle. I mean, there are pictures of
you taking naps on a summer day, kind of lulling
on Stanley's Stalley.

Speaker 2 (43:46):
Allowing a three year old to nap on the stomach
of a bull may sound beyond the pale to today's parents,
but Patrick and Mary Anne were as gonzo about parenting
as they were about protest But at a certain point,
Stanley had pure and wasn't so friendly anymore, and the
grown ups got concerned.

Speaker 24 (44:05):
Like, Okay, this this bull's getting a little dangerous. We've
gotta haven't slaughtered, And so they had Stanley slaughtered. And
I remember the little kids were at dinner in the
big building, the Man's the main building one night, and
there just to be tons and tons of beef stew,
you know, you know, and every of them was enjoying

(44:27):
the beef stew, and it just seemed dan like, like
where did this deep stew becoming? Like from the double kitchens?
I mean, how much beef stew one kitchen hole? And
then after so at some point in that dinner, you know,
I think I think, uh, I think it was Bob Canade.
As a matter of fact, who just at one point, kids,

(44:47):
sorry that but that that beef stew that you've been
eating that meal, all that delicious beef is your friend Stanley.

Speaker 2 (44:57):
The grown ups didn't have a pot to piss in
or a window to throw it out of, but it
didn't matter, because we just frolicked in a field and
dug holes in the ground and went to the public
school where we were the weird commune kids and money
didn't matter and life was easy. After his priesthood. Instead

(45:27):
of finding gainful employment, Patrick repurposed his ability to make
multimedia extravaganzas into making documentary film strips about corporate malfeasance.
His biggest one was called Guess Who's Coming to Breakfast?

Speaker 25 (45:41):
Guess Who's Coming to Breakfast?

Speaker 2 (45:45):
About Gulf and Western's abuse of sugarcane croppers in the
Dominican Republic.

Speaker 25 (45:50):
The sugar on this table came from the Dominican Republic,
a product of the Gulf and Western Corporation at the time.

Speaker 2 (45:57):
In addition to owning expansive sugar operations in the dr
Gulf and Western owned Paramount Pictures and Simon and Schuster.
And as a result of Patrick's slide show, they started
getting a ton of angry letters.

Speaker 3 (46:11):
Oh, that's what happened. That's what happened. They started to
get letters and letters and letters because this slide show
was distributed and churches were showing it, and high schools
were showing it, and colleges were showing it, and so suddenly,

(46:31):
including I think their own employees, were going, wait a minute,
we just saw this film.

Speaker 25 (46:41):
The average person has a responsibility to find out more
about big corporations because there's a lot at stake. Who's
going to control for lives of ordinary people, the giant
corporations or the people themselves.

Speaker 2 (46:55):
Gulf and Western then sent two lawyer goons to Boston
to meet with Patrick and mary Anne.

Speaker 3 (47:01):
And they lay into us how this is libel, and
they're telling us how it's not true. And they're going
on and on and on and on and on about
like why it's just so wrong, and ended saying and
our intention is, you know, we'll sue you, we'll bring
you to court. And I'm sure they expected us to wilt,

(47:26):
just in fear right, And Patrick said, this would be
an amazing opportunity for us if you bring us to court.
We were one hundred percent go ahead, So away, what
do you want the corduroy chair? And Patrick used to

(47:51):
have this great thing about how can click his heels,
you know, run and jump and click his heels. We
got outside, he just he had to clickly else.

Speaker 2 (48:01):
The National Council of Churches eventually expressed public support for Patrick,
and he and Marianne never heard from Gulf and Western again.

Speaker 3 (48:15):
No, and they backed right down. I mean that was
such a lesson in how to deal with power. It
was such a great lesson, which is to say, actually,
you don't have any I mean, go ahead, make my day,
but you don't really have any power.

Speaker 2 (48:31):
Patrick was becoming an effective outside agitator, rankling the halls
of corporate power and driving down their stock value with
his messages of justice for the downtrodden. His indefatigable optimism
in the face of annihilation by the tall buildings of
New York was a light that burned bright and hot. Patrick,

(48:52):
as my dad, was incredibly warm and funny as hell,
and he was also an enthusiastic straight man from my
childish jokes like everyone's dad, I suppose. Even looking at
the back of his head while we drove our VW
bus always gave me some measure of comfort. He had
a round, bald head with a ring of curls around
the back, and kind looking, downturned eyes like Ernie on

(49:14):
Sesame Street, and he seemed like a walking hug. His
booted feet were usually poking out from under a broken
down car behind our house. While he was alive, everything
would always be fine.

Speaker 17 (49:29):
Patrick died in the thick of that work. His movement
through the revolution was a work in progress, and it
wasn't finished, and it continues, obviously, which is the power
of what you're doing, being faithful to that humane impulse
he embodied.

Speaker 2 (49:49):
I was a sickly kid and I was home from
first grade doing spirographs at the kitchen table on October
twenty third, nineteen eighty. It was a Thursday, the morning
that he died.

Speaker 3 (50:02):
I shot up out of a sound sleep with my
heart just pounding, pounding, pounding, pounding, pounding, and I had
this thought that something unspeakable is going to happen to
someone we know who wears a hat. That was the

(50:24):
sentence that came into me. Was so bizarre, and I
remember sitting now, I almost woke. I almost woke Patrick up.

Speaker 8 (50:34):
I got up super early because I was in junior
high and I was in eighth grade.

Speaker 3 (50:39):
An Walsh and I that week had gone and taken
an acting class for the hell of it. And I
came home and he was sitting on the couch. He
was reading Jim's book Mortal Friends. And I remember thinking
to myself that he seemed kind of tired. And I
actually remember sitting on his lap and we were just

(51:03):
talking and we were talking about the weekend. There was
a new Woody Allen movie out. I think we had
lunch with you at the little table and I said
to him, wow, you seem really tired. I wonder if
you want to just take a nap, like take a
quick nap first. He said, yeah, I really am tired.
Maybe I will do that. I'll just go I want
to take a twenty minute nap, no more. And I

(51:23):
said okay. And I remember looking at the clock to
make sure I woke him up in case he didn't
wake up. I was supposed to wake him up at one.

Speaker 2 (51:33):
While he was asleep, Anne Walsh and another resident of
the man's came over to say hi.

Speaker 3 (51:38):
I was making coffee and the three of us were
just talking and visiting and all that stuff. And I
remember looking at the clock and it was ten past one,
and I said, oh, I better go wake him up.
So I just left the room and walked down to
JoJo's room, which is where he was taking his nap.

(52:01):
And I got to the doorway and the first thought,
I have. His hands were above his chest like this.
And there's a point in the consecration at Mass where
the priest would hold his hands like this before doing
the consecration, and his hands were above his chest like that.

(52:27):
The first that I had was like, Wow, it looks
like he's saying mass. And then I thought, oh my god,
he looks dead. I I don't even know where the

(52:47):
screams came from. I mean I started just and I
jumped on top of him and just started like banging
his chest and screaming and scar and screaming. And that's
when Anne and Mike and you ran down the hallway
and Anne grabbed you to run out of the house

(53:12):
so that you wouldn't see anymore, and Mike ran and
called the police and called the ambulance.

Speaker 2 (53:22):
Ann Walsh scooped me up in my long Johns and
ran downstairs to her living room. I remember her screaming
into the phone operator, you have no choice.

Speaker 3 (53:31):
I had this vision. I wanted to go to the
top of the little dirt road and like drag the
ambulance down.

Speaker 2 (53:39):
We lived in the brown house at the bottom of
the hill.

Speaker 3 (53:41):
I know what that I could have dragged an ambulance
down that hill. There's no question in my mind. I
think I stayed with him on top of him until
the ambulance.

Speaker 2 (53:53):
Came in the confusion, I wound up standing alone at
the entrance to the manse, and I watched the ambulance
turn in to the property and one of the grown
up sprint behind it down the hill.

Speaker 3 (54:18):
And I remember the doctor coming in and saying that like,
we did everything we possibly could, but he's died. He's dead,
and I think I just collapsed, and I kept saying, OK,

(54:38):
I can't, I cannot tell the kids. I cannot. The
shock was so brutal, It's like every nerve ending is
on fire. Jim was signing books at Barnes and Noble

(55:01):
when Lex called and said Patrick had a heart attack.

Speaker 2 (55:04):
Jim had himself finally left the priesthood and gotten.

Speaker 3 (55:07):
Married, and they told me the story of driving down
to the hospital, them talking about what an impossible patient
Patrick was going to be like as a hard patient. No,
this is not going to work out, this won't be good,
And that was their expectation. When they came into the

(55:29):
emergency room asking for Patrick Hughes. They expected him to
be up in a hospital room, and someone in the
emergency room had to tell them that he had died.
And Jim said, I want to see him, and they said, oh,
you were relative, and he said, yes, I'm his brother,

(55:53):
and they took him back and that's when Jim gave
him the last right. And I remember when Jim came
back to the house. I just screamed when I saw
him because I knew he and I had just lost
our best friend, that I knew what we had something

(56:17):
in common that was so deeply shared between us, you know.

Speaker 8 (56:24):
And you said, Daddy's just sleeping. He was just sleeping,
because you witnessed the entire thing, so and you just
kept saying it over and over again.

Speaker 3 (56:35):
And then the house started filling up and people started coming.
Everybody was the shock of it, Brendan was. It's like
he was the healthiest, most alive person you knew on
the whole planet, and he died.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
Patrick Hughes was forty one years old. In a few days,
Ronald Reagan would be elected to the Oval Office and
declare it was mourning in America. In six and a
half weeks, John Lennon would be shot and killed outside
the Dakota Building on Central Park West. Looking back, Patrick's

(57:20):
death marked the exact end of an era as much
as it did a single life. We held a three
day Irish wake.

Speaker 12 (57:31):
I can remember it was October obviously, and I can
remember the color of the pine neals that had fallen
off the trees and this gold and burnishing.

Speaker 2 (57:41):
It was in the living room of the manse, and.

Speaker 12 (57:48):
You know, it was a closed casket, right the grand
piano usually was, and a prejeer in front of the casket.
And you kids were like those all kinds of food
and dining rooms. Your kids would go over and get
like him and mustard on your bread and go sit
next to Patrick's body on the priger. And I was saying, honeys,

(58:11):
don't get like the mustard on the casket. You kept
opening the box. Yep, he's still in there. Yep, He's
still in there.

Speaker 2 (58:24):
Patrick's funeral was held at the Paulist Center.

Speaker 8 (58:28):
The amount of people that came again staggering, because he
was so loved and had such impact and influence. People
were rattled.

Speaker 12 (58:38):
That talent to bring people together and to serve them,
you know, showed up again at his funeral, you know,
which was at the Paulast Center. And I don't think
they had ever let in a long time maybe a
priest to live there could be buried from there, but
they didn't. We had to get special permission, and that
was It was like a bittersweet, beautiful, beautiful liturgy.

Speaker 2 (59:03):
Jim Carroll, Patrick's best friend, gave the eulogy. He told
a story of their time back in the seminary. It
was their first autumn back in nineteen sixty two. He
told us they began making bets about when the pond
would freeze, and Patrick announced he would skate across it
on December eighth. When the day came, all the Seminary

(59:26):
brothers gathered at the edge of the pond and one
of them heaved a rock that easily sank right through
the surface. But Patrick, undeterred, laced up his skates and
struck out onto the ice, and he managed to skate
all the way across as a giant crack opened up
behind it. That was the self assurance, Jim told us

(59:50):
that carried him through his priesthood and into family life.
Pat Hughes, he said, invented an approach to liturgy that
influenced not only the Paulists, but the whole American church.
Here at the Paula Center. He was the heartbeat of
one of the only Catholic churches in Boston or anywhere
that had a conscience about the war.

Speaker 3 (01:00:18):
It was funny when he died. I remember thinking this,
like the greatest gifts that you can ever give anyone
ever is to fully live your life, because when you
do and you die, no one has a regret for you,
even at forty one. I mean I could say when
he died at forty one that he had lived so

(01:00:40):
fully that even though his life was cut short, he
had lived completely. That is the most incredible gift you
can give to people.

Speaker 25 (01:00:51):
I think.

Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
Marianne and Tobin continued to distribute Patrick's slideshows for a
few years until the orders stopped coming in and VHS
took over. Then Marianne started working in politics and eventually
met an editor from the Boston Globe who had three
kids of his own. They tied their fortunes together such
as they were, and we all moved to Dorchester. He too,

(01:01:14):
would die only seven years later, but she continues to
live in the same house to this day. She eventually
founded a management institute for nonprofits and ran it until
she retired.

Speaker 8 (01:01:25):
I really resist or react very strongly when somebody tells
a story about anyone in my family, Like if anybody
sort of like pulls.

Speaker 2 (01:01:36):
Them away from me, my sister Kristen.

Speaker 8 (01:01:38):
Memory is so problematic.

Speaker 2 (01:01:40):
Kristin, Joe and I and Kate and Tron, I'm sure
and all the children of the Catholic left. We all
walk around with these stories in our hearts and they
can feel heavy. My first outline for this story is
dated February fifth, nineteen ninety nine. I've been trying to
tell it for over twenty five years.

Speaker 8 (01:02:00):
If anybody is telling me anything that I know in detail,
I'm like, it's not your fucking story to tell. That's
not what happened, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:02:08):
Inside my head, it just felt like my destiny, not
to be too melodramatic about it, to tell this story,
but it's pretty scary to finally be doing so.

Speaker 8 (01:02:18):
I feel like really tight, like do not make him
anything than what he was, which was like it just
my dad.

Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
There are so many problems with trying to capture that time,
with capturing these people and they're rollicking Jois de vive
with capturing him. I was only six when he died,
and this project has been a lifelong attempt to get
to know him better. I started doing these interviews in
two thousand and nine, Howard Zinn, Bob Kanine, and Tobin

(01:02:50):
Kip Tiernan, and my aunt Joanne Hughes all passed away.
Years ago. I moved to Los Angeles, I met my wife,
we had a son. I distracted myself with other projects
and time went on, but this one would never leave
me alone. Arthur Miller, in his autobiography, talked about how

(01:03:12):
Marilyn Monroe could walk into a room and spot all
the people that had lost a parent as a child.
There is a do you like me? He wrote, of
the look in the eyes of people who have lost
their parents, an appeal out of bottomless loneliness that no
parented person can really know. And when you're taught at

(01:03:32):
a tender age in no uncertain terms that love is
in fact quite finite in certain circumstances, you begin to
hoard any scrap you can get while mistrusting those who
offer it, like a scavenger in a war zone. You
end up a world class self saboteur, pathologically incapable of
doing the one thing that would finally make you feel better,

(01:03:54):
because then he really is permanently gone. Laborators have been
very patient with me as I finally laid this giant egg.
It was at Patrick's burial that the brutality of his
loss finally hit me. I'd spent the week making sure

(01:04:15):
he was still in the box, and when we got
to the burial, I saw that gaping maw in the ground,
waiting to swallow him forever. Then I just started to wail,
and Uncle scooped me up and whisked me away from
the scene because I think he intuited it was the
sight of the hole that was torturing me. But I

(01:04:37):
pounded him on the shoulders and demanded he turned back around,
and when he did, everyone was staring at me. Looking back,
I'm sure it was in sorrow, But at six years old,
as I looked at all their stricken faces, my only thought,
because I am nothing if not Irish Catholic, is that
I had ruined my father's burial. But there's an old

(01:05:02):
saying among Irish Catholics that gives me some comfort about this.
What's the use of being Irish if the world doesn't
break your heart. That visual of everyone staring at me
is the last thing I remember for a year, and
I've been making up for that moment ever since, which

(01:05:24):
includes I think finally talking to you. I told this
story because I wanted to get to know him better.
I told it because I wanted to get back the
love I lost that day when he went to take
a nap in JoJo's room and never woke up. I
told it because I wanted to understand this time. Before
I was born, these hilarious grown ups. I grew up

(01:05:46):
with their patriotism, their bravery, their humor, and the ferociousness
of their love. And maybe the old idea that God
is love is less of a platitude than my cynical
gen X brain originally thought. And maybe it's not God

(01:06:09):
is love, but God is love. The mysterious, inevitable feeling
that came over me when my wife Emily walked into
that party in two thousand and nine and I saw
her for the first time, but it felt like I'd
known her my entire life, or the force that made
me sob for three days when our son Oscar was born,
because my heart suddenly had to grow three sizes to

(01:06:32):
accommodate how I felt about him. Love is the mysterious
chaos in our choice to devote ourselves to other human beings.
It's easy, especially now when rugged. American individualism and meanness
are so in vogue to be cynical about movements for
social change. But all these Zany Catholics brought a ferocity

(01:06:56):
of love to what they did that cannot be denied.
Love for their country, love for each other, love for
the common man, love for anyone who is suffering.

Speaker 3 (01:07:10):
To look back at those times, to look back at
who I was, and who Patrick was, and who all
of my friends. Who are some of us, you know,
some still with us and some not.

Speaker 26 (01:07:23):
And there's something about that moment that was so It
was an unbelievable time, but there was something that was
really innocent about it.

Speaker 3 (01:07:36):
There was something about it that we believed.

Speaker 2 (01:07:46):
Patrick's headstone reads a slightness quote from Scottish poet Thomas Campbell,
to live beyond in the hearts you leave behind is
not to die. Patrick's Walk for Hunger and the Wednesday
Night Supper Club are still going fifty years later. In
recent years they've seen as many as forty four thousand

(01:08:07):
people taking part in the oldest pledge walk in the country,
and they now give out an annual Patrick Hughes Award
for Social Justice. Last Christmas, I was back in Boston
with my family and one cold crisp night, I took
my son Oscar to volunteer for the Wednesday Night supper
club in the basement of the Polis Center, which as

(01:08:28):
an organization is still going strong, forever changed by Patrick
and Floyd's brief time there. Dan here, you just recorded that.
Maybe I don't think I caught your name, Brendan, brendand Sarah.
It is a pleasure. A dedicated group of volunteers shows
up every week and cooks, waits on the guests, and

(01:08:49):
cleans the place spotless when it's done. The night I
was there, we serve turkey and stuffing. My son Oscar
handed out milks to the guests as they came in.
At first, I thought to myself, how wonderful this is
still going after so many years. But it's quick to
realize how terrible it is that after fifty years it's

(01:09:12):
still necessary, and how crucial is what Martin Luther King
described as the love that does justice.

Speaker 19 (01:09:25):
Those movements come out of love. They come out of
people's love for their fellow men and women.

Speaker 2 (01:09:33):
Howard Zinn, people they don't even know.

Speaker 19 (01:09:36):
Because I think there is something fundamental about human beings
that they are compassionate and they are moved by what
happens to the people. Sometimes people say, oh, you know, selfishness, competition,
that's part of human nature. It's not part of human nature.

(01:09:56):
That's something that is artificial that you grow up being
indoctrinated into. You're indoctrinated into violence and competition. But the
natural instincts of people, I believe, are to help other
people and to yes and to love. When the artifice
of a propaganda of government, deception, when that is stripped away,

(01:10:21):
what is left is people's natural love for other people,
and so I think it then becomes a very powerful force.

Speaker 3 (01:10:33):
His love for us was so profound that he left
us all completely whole. He didn't leave us as broken people.
He left us as whole people because he loved us
so deeply.

Speaker 12 (01:10:49):
Is something very beautiful about having adopted trime Because I
felt that I couldn't do very much. I'm not like
a really great walking on ere or a great teacher,
but I can love one person really well and consistently
and find out way that leads.

Speaker 15 (01:11:15):
As you know, loving empowers us to do things that
seem so damn impossible. Not one more step, Not one
more hour. But yes, it happened.

Speaker 2 (01:11:25):
Somehow, and you go on.

Speaker 15 (01:11:28):
I can't begin to speculate where it's all headed, but
it's spring again.

Speaker 3 (01:11:35):
I loved him so much, and that love continues to
sustain me. There's just no question about it. Which is
I mean, he's been dead forty years. That's pretty amazing,
and I'm sure I know he sustains all of you.

Speaker 2 (01:11:55):
You may remember, as Mary Anne stood at the Jetway
when she was leaving her first husband Texas, that Patrick's
seminary brother gave her his ordination card with Patrick's phone
number on the back and on the front was a
quote by tehar Deschardin. The quote on the front of
the card was this, the day will come when, after

(01:12:17):
harnessing the space, the winds, the tides, and gravity, we
shall harness for God the energies of love. And on
that day, for the second time in the history of
the world, man will have discovered fire. By the time
Karita Kent received the commission from the Boston Gas Company

(01:12:38):
to create Rainbow Swash on the Dorchester gas tank, she
had left her position as nun and art teacher at
the Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles. She had left
her order and walked away from the Catholic Church to
focus on her art and social justice. It still stands
on ninety three, momentarily delighting Bostonian commuters again. It's their

(01:13:00):
will and remains a symbol, at least to me, of
the explosive cauldron of colorful subversion that will always be Dorchester,
and it recently welcomed home one of Dorchester's proudest sons.

Speaker 4 (01:13:20):
Some Yeah. For thirty seven years, I've been in nursing,
either a nursing yat or as a nurse as an R.

Speaker 2 (01:13:29):
After the war, Paul Cooming brought his love of anyone
suffering to the medical field and became an o R nurse.
He moved to Minneapolis, where he raised two children. He
has continued to be an activist throughout the decades. Then
he came home to Dorchester.

Speaker 4 (01:13:46):
I know that I was brought up to believe that
God was love. If you want to know God, you've
got to know love. You have to be loved, you
have to you know, commit love. And this action community
that well was the work of love. I mean, I
was there because I loved my country so much that

(01:14:07):
I was willing to do what I did I didn't
love my government. I opposed my government because it was
doing wrong, but I never failed to love the people
that it ruled over. And I think I and others
were able to transfer those feelings of respect and love
to that joy during that trial. We let them know

(01:14:29):
that we were in love with the We had no
problem with the people in the United States, which is
that problem with the government, and that people had to
stand up and be responsible to write the ship.

Speaker 2 (01:14:41):
Can I end that?

Speaker 4 (01:14:43):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (01:14:45):
All right?

Speaker 2 (01:14:55):
Divine Intervention was a production of iHeart Podcasts. It was
produced by Wonder Media Network and was created and written
by me your host, Brendan Patrick Hughes. Our deeply incredible
producers were the Bureau Chief, Carmen Borca Correo, the Scimitar
of Wit, Abby Delk, the secret Weapon Palomo Moreno, Jimenez,

(01:15:19):
the Mother Confessor, Grace Lynch, and myself. Our editor was
Gift to every room she walks into. Grace Lynch for
Wonder Media Network. Our executive producers were the great and
powerful Emily Rudder with a thousand watts smile and Jenny Kaplan,
who has incredible tastes in podcast pilots. For iHeart Podcasts.

(01:15:40):
Our executive producer was Christina Everett, whom I hope I
get to high five one day for Drout Street book Club.
Our executive producer was Rolin Jones, who I've spent my
entire career trying to impress. Over the last twenty years
of making this, I was helped by several friends along
the way, including Morris Smiley, Jeff Zen, Adam O'Byrne, Tony Manna,

(01:16:02):
Ethan Stocks, Louis Wheeler, Chris Banow, Susie Blair, Masha Simmering,
Dante Marino, Pamela Grimaud, Jonathan Fierros, Elise Corwin, Joe Trepeia,
Kristin Hughes, Amelia Hirsch, Jaji Hammer, and Carly Pope, who
voiced the late Sarah Tosi. Our theme and end credit
music was composed and performed by Tanya Donnelly. Yes, fellow

(01:16:24):
gen xers that Tanya Donnelly. And if you're wondering if
this meets I got to meet her in person, the
answer is yes, and she's even more awesome than you've imagined.
It was mastered by one of my oldest friends, Ben Aarons.
Special thanks to my agent at Uta Shelby Shankman, who
took one listen to the pilot and said, Brendan, let's
sell this thing to Davey Gardner at the Tribeca Festival,

(01:16:47):
who makes dreams come true. To my wife Emily Topper
and our son Oscar who put up with relentless skipped
dinners and missed soccer practices to allow this show to
come into the world. Extra special thanks to all the staggering,
the inspirational patriots who allowed me to interview them, beginning
twenty years ago in two thousand and five on a
road trip with my mother, Mary Anne Hughes. This project

(01:17:10):
was made in loving memory of my father, Patrick Hughes,
born in nineteen thirty nine died nineteen eighty. This is
Brendan Patrick Hughes signing off thank you for listening to
Divine Intervention.