Coming from a long tradition of Catholic social action, the Berrigan's home is also a living testament to the lives of Jerry's brothers, Father Daniel Berrigan, SJ, and Phillip Berrigan, who is currently serving a prison sentence in Ohio for civil disobedience.  All three Berrigan brothers would come to know and love Dorothy Day.  It is his brothers' activism that compelled Jerry Berrigan toward living out Jesus' radical messages of peace and service.  He has been arrested numerous times, too many to count, for his own acts of civil disobedience.  Most recently he crawled under the fence at Hancock Air Base in protest of the Iraqi sanctions and the bombings the U.S. takes part in in that country. 

Carol Berrigan spent the earlier years of their marriage at home with their fur children allowing Jerry to exercise his conscience fully.  She remembered the time their son was about to graduate from high school when his father was serving a jail sentence.  "He stood right by that window," Carol said.  "And he said, 'You know, mom, my friends' parents worry if they will be arrested.  I worry if my father will be arrested,'" Carol said.  Father Daniel Berrigan was lecturing in Europe at the time, Carol explained, and he flew to Syracuse to stand in for Jerry at his nephew's graduation.

Their children grew up visiting prisons, Carol said.  They visited their uncles and their father.  They did not find prison a demoralizing experience, Jerry said.  "When it came to be my turn, they may have been a little apprehensive," Jerry said.  All of the protests, vigils and arrests do not come without some sense of tradition and from a place deep within them.

Jerry Berrigan's mother was known and loved throughout her life for her own Gospel living, Carol said.  She was so revered that Dorothy Day was pleased to meet her as well.  Jerry explained what it was like growing up in the Berrigan household during the Depression.  "I had a wonderful example in my mother," Jerry said.  "She was a woman of vision and a woman of faith, a woman who lived in the Spirit.  The Berrigans lived off a main road, Jerry said, and folks often wandered by looking for a piece of bread, an apple, a drink, whatever might be available.  During the Depression, he said, everyone was reduced to the same level.  His mother made sure the visitors had enough to eat, often inviting them in to share a meal with the family.  The barn was used as a shelter for the wanderers, too.  One  man, who was obviously in very frail health, came for dinner and stayed through the winter, Jerry said.

Carol's father was of the same ilk.  During the Depression, a homeless man slept in her father's car several nights.  Many neighbors told him that he should lock the car's doors to keep the man out.  "We found out later he had been leaving food in the car for the man," Carol remembered.

Feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the poor are all part of life, not some far-out concept for the couple.  It is what one does when attempting to live out the gospel.  They both are no lovers of limelight, but they are pleased to accept this award named for Day.  "For me, Dorothy Day is the living embodiment of the mind of Christ," Jerry said.  "To love and cherish the poor.  In so doing you love and cherish your neighbor, in so doing you love and cherish Him.  For me, she is an example of living faith, which in ideal Christianity would be sought by everyone calling him or herself a Christion."

Dorothy Day was a model, Carol said.  A model who teaches all how to "truly live you faith, never with fanfare."  Jerry marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., Carol said.  "In our neighborhood, in our parishes, in our teaching, we alwayes referred to the one human family and that you live that way," Carol said.  "The question of race should be irrelevant, right Jerry?"  "Christianly speaking, sure,"  Jerry replied to her.

Carol and Jerry are both teachers with almost 70 years of teaching between the both of them.  Jerry still teaches English courses at Onondaga Community College where he's been teaching for more than 45 years.  Carol teaches inclusive education at Syracuse University where she has been for over 20 years.

                                                       --from an article by Connie Cissell in the Catholic Sun April 12, 2001