David T. Music And Stuff

Happy New Year to family and friends,

I took a break from editing and publishing a story by Don, Dad, Grampa’ last weekend. I’m sorry that you missed reading it. I missed reading my weekly ‘Don Tschirhart story’, also.

Here is a wonderful story about people who go out of their way to help others. Some of them going well beyond their comfort zone to help others no matter how difficult and burdensome it may be for the ‘do-gooder’ as dad calls them.

I have the honor of being friends with one of those unsung heroes. Father Norman Thomas of Sacred Heart and Saint Elizabeth Catholic Churches in Detroit near downtown. I play bass in the church choir band at St. Elizabeth on Canfield at McDougal.

Father Thomas is a man in his mid-eighties who has the energy of someone younger.  He doesn’t talk a lot about his charitable work but, has a regular routine of visiting jails, hospitals, rehab facilities, homes . . . You name it! Father Thomas said an awesome and fitting prayer at my beautiful Wedding at the Motown Museum where, of course he is close friends with the museum director.

He is involved with many charitable works and is probably a constant thorn in the side of Detroit City Counsel members as he lobbies for their attention on the various projects he sponsors. He’s close friends with former Congressman John Conyers who visits the church, occasionally. Father Thomas gets involved in marches and protests in the city that involve issues he finds worthy. I’m very sure he was heavily involved with the Civil Rights movement in the sixties.

And then there’s the constant work of maintaining two parishes, one of which is on the endangered list of closures by the Archdiocese of Detroit. Father Thomas says Saint Elizabeth will stay open as long as it’s pastor is alive “and I have no intention of seeing this parish close!” he has forcefully exclaimed at mass . . . So, let’s give a loud shout-out to Father Thomas . . . “Long Live Father Norman Thomas!”

During these days of bitter cold, it’s good to know that there are people out there like Father Thomas and others (Deacon Bob Delvechio) who go out of their comfort zones regularly to help others in need. Think of something that you too can do that, no matter how small a contribution, can make this winter a little more comfortable for someone in need.

I hope this story by Don, Dad, Grampa’ will enlighten and inspire you’

With all my love to friends and family for the New Year,

David T

ps. Comments are more than welcome in the “Leave a Reply” section after the story.

 

“Do-Gooders Are Blessed”

By Don Tschirhart

Excerpted from the unpublished book “It’s a Wonderful World II: A Retired Reporter Looks At Life“

 

Do-Gooders Are Blessed

To paraphrase the Bible, Blessed are the do-gooders of this world. They will be called saints and praised . . . Rightfully so.

Here in Lapeer County and across the country churches open their doors and invite homeless people to spend cold nights in the warmth of a church hall.

Many churches also have year-around programs providing food to needy families and even paying utility bills to continue home heat in mid-winter. Almost all doctors and dentists treat underprivileged, uninsured patients for free or for a small fee.

I think I have probably seen most of the best and the worst side of life during my 42 years as a Detroit news reporter.

One of my favorite do-gooders was Fr. Vaughn Quinn, who with one of his two St. Bernard dogs, walked Detroit’s Skid Row after bar hours picking up drunks from streets and alleys putting them in cabs transporting them to his alcoholic rehab center. Quinn then walked the centers’ old halls and dormitories all night to see the drunks didn’t burn down the place with a dropped cigarettes.

Rev. Redmond of the Cass Methodist Church in the Detroit tenderloin district, the Cass Corridor, was a sucker for a sob story. His daily lunches for the poor in the area were famous. And he always could find a place for a homeless family.

He told me, “I love people. Rich or poor. All of them belong to God.”

The Detroit Rescue Mission and the Salvation Army do a Herculean job of providing bed space and a meal for those who have neither. St. Patrick Church and St. Bonaventure, home of the famous, Blessed, Fr. Solonus Casey, opened soup kitchens and served hundreds of people a day.

There are some ‘do-gooders’ who prefer to remain anonymous, but somehow always get into the news.

Volunteers from various Lapeer and Capac Christian churches visit the Thumb Correctional Facility and County Jail to give inmates spiritual solace.

Even though there are guards around it takes special people to go through prison security screening to teach and pray with those who are imprisoned, some for horrendous crimes.

Another of my favorite do-gooders was the late Monsignor Clement Kern, pastor of Holy Trinity Church in one of the poorest and seediest neighborhoods in Detroit called Corktown.

The monsignor was awakened nearly every night at 3 or 4 a.m, by someone at the door asking for a handout, a place to bed down or to make his peace with God. Kern would always comply . . . and with a smile. A statue of the smiling priest is in a nearby park.

Much of his funds came from the “Shakedown Society” which was headquartered in, of all places, the Anchor Bar. A television photographer, helped by Kern to stop drinking, started the society. A church offering basket hangs on the wall of the Anchor Bar and is periodically passed around. The bills and loose change always find their way to Holy Trinity Church to be distributed to the poor.

Msgr. Kern and the TV man started something, didn’t they?

Curiosity led me to several well-to-do women from the Grosse Pointes’ whose quiet “charity” is helping to fund the work of the Christ Child Society, an inter-denominational rehabilitation center located next to the grave site of Henry Ford I and his wife, Clara, at Joy and Greenfield, Detroit.

The Society cares for physically, mentally and sexually abused children from all over Metro Detroit. I went through the center and met some of the kids who had been beaten and raped. A year later I went back and talked with those same children.

Their progress was amazing. Instead of the fear in their eyes I had first seen, there were smiles and laughter. Chubby cheeks replaced hollow ones. Broken bones had been healed.

Rehabilitation usually takes two years, and dozens of the child-graduates have been adopted-out and are in loving homes. I would love to meet again one little girl whose bruises and slings indicated the battering she received from an alcoholic parent. When I saw her a year after my first meeting she hugged me. She was reborn thanks to the Christ Child Society.

Of all the charities in Detroit this is one of the most deserving, yet is one of the least known. The Grosse Pointe women volunteers have made it a point that the rehab center won’t be forgotten.

I’m curious why there are so many pessimists when we have so many do-gooders in America, Michigan and Lapeer County.

If that makes me socially bullish, so be it.

[Editor’s note: I italicized the names of the charities dad lists so they would perhaps, be remembered and researched by the reader {DT}]