December 22, 2025 • 14 mins
Christmas has arrived early at Catholic Charities in Paterson, NJ, with two recent ribbon-cuttings: A new location for Murray House, the longest running group home in the state for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and a new state-of-the-art drug and alcohol rehabilitation center, Straight and Narrow. Our guest is Scott Milliken, Chief Executive Officer, Catholic Charities, Diocese of Paterson.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to get connected with Nina del Rio, a weekly
conversation about fitness, health and happenings in our community on
one oh six point seven Light FM.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Welcome and thanks for listening to get connected. Very close
now to Christmas, but Christmas has arrived early at Catholic
Charities in Patterson, New Jersey, with two recent ribbon cuttings.
Last month they opened a new location for Murray House,
the longest running group home in New Jersey for men
and women with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and earlier in December,
(00:34):
Catholic Charities in Patterson also officially had a ribbon cutting
for a new state of the art drug and Alcohol
Rehabilitation Center Straight and Narrow, rebuilding the prior center that
was destroyed in a fire in twenty nineteen. Congratulations on
both to our guest, Scott Milliken, Chief Executive Officer of
Catholic Charities the Diocese of Patterson. Thank you for being
(00:56):
on the show, Thank you for having me. You can
find out more at Ccpatterson dot org. Scott Milliken has
been with Catholic Charity since nineteen ninety two. In twenty eighteen,
he was appointed as the first Chief Executive Officer of
Catholic Charities in the Diocese of Patterson. Catholic Charities does
so much work across the country, even in Patterson, especially
(01:18):
in Patterson, Catholic Charities is vast. There's such a wide
range of services and supports.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
So we have services in Morris, Passaic and Sussex County.
We have a food pantry in each county. One in Morris,
one Passaic, one in Sussex. We do meals on wheals.
We have veteran supports. If you are a homeless veteran
in our diocese and you give us a call, we'll
have you within housing within five hours. Early learning child centers,
(01:48):
we have three schools. We have services for emergency supports
so those folks who are dealing with possible eviction or homeless,
business utility assistance and give away about two million dollars
in grants each year for that. Our food pantries are
(02:10):
we're just about reaching four million pounds of food each year,
so we have daily lines at our food pantry. Of
food and security is of recent a struggle for a
lot of folks. And then we have services for intellectual
and developmental disabilities, group homes for adults with disabilities. We
(02:31):
have a day program and we have a support coordination
case management for over two hundred and seventy five families
living in Sussex County. We also have a senior program
in Patterson, so senior day program for Patterson. And then
we also have Straight and Arrow, which is continuum of
(02:52):
care service organization. Whether you're coming in at the very
beginning with detox, we have a thirty bed Deep Talks
hospital and then depending on what services that person might
need long term or short term, inpatient or outpatient short
term or intensive outpatient treatment, so we provide all of that,
(03:15):
and then we provide one of the only mommy and
me programs. If you're a mom struggling with addiction or
if your child has been born with addictions, we will
take not only mom, but the infant and any other
children that they have so that mom and children can
stay together, get well, get treated, and move on in
(03:38):
a safe, safe way.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
As I mentioned, it's a vast number of supports. You
can find out more about the work of Catholic Charities
in Patterson at Ccpatterson dot org. I'm speaking with Scott Milliken.
He is the CEO of Catholic Charities in the Diocese
of Patterson. You're listening to get connected on one six
point seven light FM. I'm Mina del rio. You mentioned
work for persons with disabilities. Murray House is operated by
(04:02):
your DPD. Tell us about Murray House what makes it special?
Speaker 3 (04:05):
So Murray House was started by Father Jack Werwin and
it is the longest running group home in the state
of New Jersey for adults with developmental disabilities. The agency
started out on rather a sad note in the sixties
when a young mother who had two children with disabilities
(04:27):
committed suicide because she couldn't have she couldn't stay home
and be with the kids, because she needed to work,
and she couldn't go to work because there was nobody
to watch her kids. Their children weren't allowed to go
to school at that time in the early sixties, and
there was really no services, and she felt trapped. Father
(04:48):
Whorland started what was called the Grunert Nursery Center in Patterson,
and parents came out of the kind of woodwork and wow,
this is wonderful that it was a daycare for special needs.
Kids with special needs. You know, those kids kind of
grew up and they went Father Orland and started a
(05:09):
camp for summer rest bite and then those kids became
adults and he saw the need for long term residential
facility for children with disabilities and young adults. And now
some of those adults, two of them are the original
Murray residents that live at Murray House. And the current
(05:30):
house that we had, which was operating again since seventy one,
wasn't conducive for folks to age in place, so it
was a multi level facility, multi level home, and we
really felt the need that we needed all of to
make and move towards group homes that are rant style
(05:51):
homes where people can age in place, because some of
the folks that have lived with us have been with
us for so many years, and if they can't navigate
the stairs, it's a safety hazard, a fire hazard, and
we have to kind of rearrange their residential placement to
make sure that we can accommodate them safely. And now
(06:12):
they can age in place and stay in their homes
as long as they can.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Can you talk about what people have been most excited
about since they've moved in.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
The move was a lateral move. We were in Clifton
and where we stayed in Clifton but the accessibility to
the home. The previous Murray Murray House was on four
different stories, so navigating the stairs and people with mobility
issues really starting to become a problem. So a fully
(06:40):
accessible home for folks to live and aid.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
And how do the staff feel about it. I'm sure
you've had some of those staff for many years as well.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
One of the things Styler Whorland always said was, no
matter what, he always wanted our facilities to be top
of the line maintenance free, and we've always kept that
vision and goal alive to make sure that we keep
the homes nice. We also have one of father Whorland's
dreams was to have a living staff in each of
(07:11):
the facilities, so we have a staff or family that
lives with us, and his caveat was always that if
you lived there and they lived there, you have investment
in the house. You have an investment in the people,
You have investment in how the facility looks, that the
garbage cans are taken in, and we want to be
(07:32):
really good neighbors. So that is all part of the
values that father Whorland instilled in us.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Well, congratulations on opening that new space. You also had
another recent ribbon cutting for straight and narrow. That was
kind of a rebuilding after a fire in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Correct, we had just finished renovating a men's halfway house
and the building which was actually the quarter Right Building,
the original quarter Right building that built airplane wings for
World War Two. Like any nonprofit or a grassroots organization,
when we start our programs, we usually fit the service
(08:13):
into an existing building that's leased or or owned, and
the services fit into the space. Here, we had the opportunity,
not only because of the fire, but COVID hit and
a lot of planning went into the building to really
design a full rehabilitation center that is conducive on a
(08:33):
conducive environment for those seeking assistance with recovery. So that
was a great it was a great opportunity. So what
turned into a tragedy and we said at the ground
opening that we're so thankful that nobody was hurt. No
emergency personnel were hurt, no firefighters, no police, no staff,
(08:53):
no residents, and a building is just a building. Lives
is what matters. And once we were over the fact
that everybody was safe, a Monsignor Tillier, who the building
is named after, Monseignor Herbert Tillier. He stood up and said,
we will rebuild, and here we are six years later.
And it took a long time, and a lot of contributors,
(09:17):
working with our leaders, especially Benjamin Wimberley and Nelly Poe,
really assisted us in moving this project forward. And it's
going to be a green building. We're going to have
solder on it, so it's really just a state of
the art facility.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
And now that you have, as you mentioned, an opportunity
or had an opportunity to build new kinds of programs.
You mentioned the green roof, what else would you are
you able to offer in the new space.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
So we will have a fifty four bed men's halfway
house which will be upstairs. We'll have the administrative offices
of Straight and Narrow upstairs, and then all of our clinicals.
So about two to three hundred patients a day who
do outpit will come through the facility downstairs and they'll
(10:05):
have all their clinical their group and their individual counseling
in that space. And as well, it has a big
great room where we will let full capacity do roughly
three thousand meals a day for the people that we serve.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
One more space to mention is the Father English Food Pantry.
There's already several locations. Can you talk about this new one?
It sounds very cool.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
So the food pantry, it has been placed in an
old church. Father English Center is what it was previously
known as, and we still talk about it as Father
English Center, but it's really a Catholic Charities program and
it was over many years. The theater was a Bengo hall.
(10:50):
It was rented out for weddings and birthdays and all
sorts of family events. And we really just of the
need that food insecurity was so much and we decided,
with the assistance of Bishop Kevin Sweeney, allowed us to
do a capital campaign to completely renovate. It was a
(11:12):
five million dollar capital campaign that we raised the funds
in about five months to do the work. And this
is going to be a choice food pantry. We have
donations of freezers and just because we raise the money,
we're still frugal with the funds that we receive. But
it has like Costco or BJ's type coolers and refrigerators
(11:37):
where people can walk in, open the doors and take
out milk or take out eggs. And when I say
a choice food pantry. Folks will get allotment of points
depending on their family size. When they come in, they'll
get a cart, they'll get the amount of points that
they have, and they can actually shop. And it's a
switch from the traditional food pantry where you and get
(12:00):
a prepackaged bag of food. People get to really choose
what they want. We also have built in a training
center where we're going to do working with the Health
Coalition of Passaic County in Saint Joe's Health in Patterson,
where we'll have diabetes training and health fares and vaccinations
and so it has a training space as well, and
(12:24):
the director, Carlos Rodan is we're actually going to be
starting a podcast Cooking with Carlos, and he's going to
actually be taking food pantry items showing folks what you
can cook with items out of the food pantry.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Very any there's also a hydroponic garden, so you be
growing some of your own food.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
So yes, we're going to be one of the first
hydroponic farms in the state of New Jersey in an
urban area. And it's a forty foot by eight foot
trailer that's completely designed with lights and electric and plumbing.
It only uses three gallons of water a day and
we will be growing five hundred heads of lettuce in
(13:03):
one week. So yes, you heard that right, crazy amount
of lettuce, but five hundred heads of lettuce in one week,
and that will go directly from the farm right into
the food pantry. And we're also working on a grant
to we have in Jefferson Township where we have a
one hundred acre farm that we are going to start
(13:26):
chickens eggs and we'll be bringing fresh eggs to to
food pantry every single day. So that's really exciting as well.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
In our last minute or so, what would you like
people to know about donations and volunteering.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Assist us at ccpatterson dot org. People can donate right
on the website. For Christmas, we have ccpatterson dot org
slash tree, so we give away thousands of presents and
toys to those in our community who can't afford at Christmas.
So we assist with that Patterson dot org or cccpatterson
(14:03):
dot org slash tree for Christmas.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
And Christmas is just a couple of days away, so
maybe go online while you can and find out what
you can do for the holiday and all the good
work of Catholic Charities in the Diocese of Patterson at
Ccpatterson dot org. Our guest has been CEO Scott Milliken.
Thank you for being on Get Connected and Happy Christmas.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
This has been Get Connected with Nina del Rio on
one oh six point seven light Fm. The views and
opinions of our guests do not necessarily reflect the views
of the station. If you missed any part of our
show or want to share it, visit our website for
downloads and podcasts at one oh six to seven lightfm
dot com. Thanks for listening.
Welcome to get connected with Nina del Rio, a weekly
conversation about fitness, health and happenings in our community on
one oh six point seven Light FM.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Welcome and thanks for listening to get connected. Very close
now to Christmas, but Christmas has arrived early at Catholic
Charities in Patterson, New Jersey, with two recent ribbon cuttings.
Last month they opened a new location for Murray House,
the longest running group home in New Jersey for men
and women with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and earlier in December,
(00:34):
Catholic Charities in Patterson also officially had a ribbon cutting
for a new state of the art drug and Alcohol
Rehabilitation Center Straight and Narrow, rebuilding the prior center that
was destroyed in a fire in twenty nineteen. Congratulations on
both to our guest, Scott Milliken, Chief Executive Officer of
Catholic Charities the Diocese of Patterson. Thank you for being
(00:56):
on the show, Thank you for having me. You can
find out more at Ccpatterson dot org. Scott Milliken has
been with Catholic Charity since nineteen ninety two. In twenty eighteen,
he was appointed as the first Chief Executive Officer of
Catholic Charities in the Diocese of Patterson. Catholic Charities does
so much work across the country, even in Patterson, especially
(01:18):
in Patterson, Catholic Charities is vast. There's such a wide
range of services and supports.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
So we have services in Morris, Passaic and Sussex County.
We have a food pantry in each county. One in Morris,
one Passaic, one in Sussex. We do meals on wheals.
We have veteran supports. If you are a homeless veteran
in our diocese and you give us a call, we'll
have you within housing within five hours. Early learning child centers,
(01:48):
we have three schools. We have services for emergency supports
so those folks who are dealing with possible eviction or homeless,
business utility assistance and give away about two million dollars
in grants each year for that. Our food pantries are
(02:10):
we're just about reaching four million pounds of food each year,
so we have daily lines at our food pantry. Of
food and security is of recent a struggle for a
lot of folks. And then we have services for intellectual
and developmental disabilities, group homes for adults with disabilities. We
(02:31):
have a day program and we have a support coordination
case management for over two hundred and seventy five families
living in Sussex County. We also have a senior program
in Patterson, so senior day program for Patterson. And then
we also have Straight and Arrow, which is continuum of
(02:52):
care service organization. Whether you're coming in at the very
beginning with detox, we have a thirty bed Deep Talks
hospital and then depending on what services that person might
need long term or short term, inpatient or outpatient short
term or intensive outpatient treatment, so we provide all of that,
(03:15):
and then we provide one of the only mommy and
me programs. If you're a mom struggling with addiction or
if your child has been born with addictions, we will
take not only mom, but the infant and any other
children that they have so that mom and children can
stay together, get well, get treated, and move on in
(03:38):
a safe, safe way.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
As I mentioned, it's a vast number of supports. You
can find out more about the work of Catholic Charities
in Patterson at Ccpatterson dot org. I'm speaking with Scott Milliken.
He is the CEO of Catholic Charities in the Diocese
of Patterson. You're listening to get connected on one six
point seven light FM. I'm Mina del rio. You mentioned
work for persons with disabilities. Murray House is operated by
(04:02):
your DPD. Tell us about Murray House what makes it special?
Speaker 3 (04:05):
So Murray House was started by Father Jack Werwin and
it is the longest running group home in the state
of New Jersey for adults with developmental disabilities. The agency
started out on rather a sad note in the sixties
when a young mother who had two children with disabilities
(04:27):
committed suicide because she couldn't have she couldn't stay home
and be with the kids, because she needed to work,
and she couldn't go to work because there was nobody
to watch her kids. Their children weren't allowed to go
to school at that time in the early sixties, and
there was really no services, and she felt trapped. Father
(04:48):
Whorland started what was called the Grunert Nursery Center in Patterson,
and parents came out of the kind of woodwork and wow,
this is wonderful that it was a daycare for special needs.
Kids with special needs. You know, those kids kind of
grew up and they went Father Orland and started a
(05:09):
camp for summer rest bite and then those kids became
adults and he saw the need for long term residential
facility for children with disabilities and young adults. And now
some of those adults, two of them are the original
Murray residents that live at Murray House. And the current
(05:30):
house that we had, which was operating again since seventy one,
wasn't conducive for folks to age in place, so it
was a multi level facility, multi level home, and we
really felt the need that we needed all of to
make and move towards group homes that are rant style
(05:51):
homes where people can age in place, because some of
the folks that have lived with us have been with
us for so many years, and if they can't navigate
the stairs, it's a safety hazard, a fire hazard, and
we have to kind of rearrange their residential placement to
make sure that we can accommodate them safely. And now
(06:12):
they can age in place and stay in their homes
as long as they can.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Can you talk about what people have been most excited
about since they've moved in.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
The move was a lateral move. We were in Clifton
and where we stayed in Clifton but the accessibility to
the home. The previous Murray Murray House was on four
different stories, so navigating the stairs and people with mobility
issues really starting to become a problem. So a fully
(06:40):
accessible home for folks to live and aid.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
And how do the staff feel about it. I'm sure
you've had some of those staff for many years as well.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
One of the things Styler Whorland always said was, no
matter what, he always wanted our facilities to be top
of the line maintenance free, and we've always kept that
vision and goal alive to make sure that we keep
the homes nice. We also have one of father Whorland's
dreams was to have a living staff in each of
(07:11):
the facilities, so we have a staff or family that
lives with us, and his caveat was always that if
you lived there and they lived there, you have investment
in the house. You have an investment in the people,
You have investment in how the facility looks, that the
garbage cans are taken in, and we want to be
(07:32):
really good neighbors. So that is all part of the
values that father Whorland instilled in us.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Well, congratulations on opening that new space. You also had
another recent ribbon cutting for straight and narrow. That was
kind of a rebuilding after a fire in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Correct, we had just finished renovating a men's halfway house
and the building which was actually the quarter Right Building,
the original quarter Right building that built airplane wings for
World War Two. Like any nonprofit or a grassroots organization,
when we start our programs, we usually fit the service
(08:13):
into an existing building that's leased or or owned, and
the services fit into the space. Here, we had the opportunity,
not only because of the fire, but COVID hit and
a lot of planning went into the building to really
design a full rehabilitation center that is conducive on a
(08:33):
conducive environment for those seeking assistance with recovery. So that
was a great it was a great opportunity. So what
turned into a tragedy and we said at the ground
opening that we're so thankful that nobody was hurt. No
emergency personnel were hurt, no firefighters, no police, no staff,
(08:53):
no residents, and a building is just a building. Lives
is what matters. And once we were over the fact
that everybody was safe, a Monsignor Tillier, who the building
is named after, Monseignor Herbert Tillier. He stood up and said,
we will rebuild, and here we are six years later.
And it took a long time, and a lot of contributors,
(09:17):
working with our leaders, especially Benjamin Wimberley and Nelly Poe,
really assisted us in moving this project forward. And it's
going to be a green building. We're going to have
solder on it, so it's really just a state of
the art facility.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
And now that you have, as you mentioned, an opportunity
or had an opportunity to build new kinds of programs.
You mentioned the green roof, what else would you are
you able to offer in the new space.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
So we will have a fifty four bed men's halfway
house which will be upstairs. We'll have the administrative offices
of Straight and Narrow upstairs, and then all of our clinicals.
So about two to three hundred patients a day who
do outpit will come through the facility downstairs and they'll
(10:05):
have all their clinical their group and their individual counseling
in that space. And as well, it has a big
great room where we will let full capacity do roughly
three thousand meals a day for the people that we serve.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
One more space to mention is the Father English Food Pantry.
There's already several locations. Can you talk about this new one?
It sounds very cool.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
So the food pantry, it has been placed in an
old church. Father English Center is what it was previously
known as, and we still talk about it as Father
English Center, but it's really a Catholic Charities program and
it was over many years. The theater was a Bengo hall.
(10:50):
It was rented out for weddings and birthdays and all
sorts of family events. And we really just of the
need that food insecurity was so much and we decided,
with the assistance of Bishop Kevin Sweeney, allowed us to
do a capital campaign to completely renovate. It was a
(11:12):
five million dollar capital campaign that we raised the funds
in about five months to do the work. And this
is going to be a choice food pantry. We have
donations of freezers and just because we raise the money,
we're still frugal with the funds that we receive. But
it has like Costco or BJ's type coolers and refrigerators
(11:37):
where people can walk in, open the doors and take
out milk or take out eggs. And when I say
a choice food pantry. Folks will get allotment of points
depending on their family size. When they come in, they'll
get a cart, they'll get the amount of points that
they have, and they can actually shop. And it's a
switch from the traditional food pantry where you and get
(12:00):
a prepackaged bag of food. People get to really choose
what they want. We also have built in a training
center where we're going to do working with the Health
Coalition of Passaic County in Saint Joe's Health in Patterson,
where we'll have diabetes training and health fares and vaccinations
and so it has a training space as well, and
(12:24):
the director, Carlos Rodan is we're actually going to be
starting a podcast Cooking with Carlos, and he's going to
actually be taking food pantry items showing folks what you
can cook with items out of the food pantry.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Very any there's also a hydroponic garden, so you be
growing some of your own food.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
So yes, we're going to be one of the first
hydroponic farms in the state of New Jersey in an
urban area. And it's a forty foot by eight foot
trailer that's completely designed with lights and electric and plumbing.
It only uses three gallons of water a day and
we will be growing five hundred heads of lettuce in
(13:03):
one week. So yes, you heard that right, crazy amount
of lettuce, but five hundred heads of lettuce in one week,
and that will go directly from the farm right into
the food pantry. And we're also working on a grant
to we have in Jefferson Township where we have a
one hundred acre farm that we are going to start
(13:26):
chickens eggs and we'll be bringing fresh eggs to to
food pantry every single day. So that's really exciting as well.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
In our last minute or so, what would you like
people to know about donations and volunteering.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Assist us at ccpatterson dot org. People can donate right
on the website. For Christmas, we have ccpatterson dot org
slash tree, so we give away thousands of presents and
toys to those in our community who can't afford at Christmas.
So we assist with that Patterson dot org or cccpatterson
(14:03):
dot org slash tree for Christmas.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
And Christmas is just a couple of days away, so
maybe go online while you can and find out what
you can do for the holiday and all the good
work of Catholic Charities in the Diocese of Patterson at
Ccpatterson dot org. Our guest has been CEO Scott Milliken.
Thank you for being on Get Connected and Happy Christmas.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
This has been Get Connected with Nina del Rio on
one oh six point seven light Fm. The views and
opinions of our guests do not necessarily reflect the views
of the station. If you missed any part of our
show or want to share it, visit our website for
downloads and podcasts at one oh six to seven lightfm
dot com. Thanks for listening.
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