2006 Dorothy Day Award
Kathleen Rumpf

 

Harsh and Dreadful Love....Living the truth of Dorothy Day

As a young woman, Kathleen Rumpf “worked the door” at the Catholic workers house in NYC. She recalls that those who came to the door, those who were most vulnerable, were really no different than her. They were the betrayed class of people who slipped through the cracks of our social services; they were the mentally retarded, the alcoholic vets, and the marginalized.

Kathleen was born in Syracuse NY to a family of 6. Her parents and family supported the military and as Kathleen put in “were racists”. As a small child, she would draw pictures of the impoverished children and people of other countries, pictures she could only view on the cover of a National Geographic magazine. She recalls her mother scolding her for drawing such “dreadful” pictures, but Kathleen was drawn to the pain in their faces. She thought they were beautiful. It was then that she started to feel that she was different.

As a product of her family, she was “confused but not rebellious”.

After her family moved to Florida, she did take a job as tech in a nursing home working with the elderly. It was there that a friend told her of the work being done at the Catholic Worker home in NYC. By this time, her mother had remarried an ex-military man and she knew she could never please her family.

1971 a young and quiet Kathleen took a bus from Florida to NYC to start her work at the Bowery. At the Catholic worker home, she saw men and women eating out of the garbage, bag ladies like “Katherine”, an elderly women who lived at the worker home when she became too weak to live on the streets. This experience changed her. Every day she called into question her prior beliefs. This life cannot be romanticized, and as Dorothy Day stated herself: ”it was a hard and dreadful love”.   To touch the ulcers of the homeless, see frostbitten limbs, see individuals who have lost toes or fingers reminded Kathleen that this is war, the war between the privileged and the unrepresented.  Over the 11 years she spent here, as US military spending increased, the faces of those at the door changed from the “men of the road”, to vets, to women, to children. “When is it acceptable in this country to find a highchair in a soup kitchen?”

This life was hard for Kathleen who internalized this betrayal of fellow humans. It was Dorothy Day who took notice of Kathleen’s own vulnerability and took care of her. Kathleen recalls Dorothy (who was in her 80’s by then) as a kind, motherly and approachable person. Dorothy taught Kathleen what living, as a Christian, was all about. “Dorothy lived in her soul”, recalls Kathleen. Dorothy Day prayed often, wrote and struggled with the institutionalization of the Catholic Church. It was during the clarification of thought sessions, that Dorothy taught Kathleen and others to “do the works of mercy and ask the question why we have homeless people”. This helped Kathleen realize that even her work at the worker home was not enough; she was called to wipe her tears, and stand up in acts of civil disobedience.  “The eminence of it all drove me to action, people were dropping right in front of me.”

People have told Kathleen that they could never have the courage to do what she does. She told me that she does not want people to have to do what she does, it is hard! For her it all starts with the works of mercy: feed the poor, cloth the naked, bury the dead, visit the sick, and shelter the homeless. Doing so will soften the hardness of ones thought, open up to the blindness of apathy, and touch the symbolic wounds of the poor. This then will be a conversion experience.

It is truly fitting that St Andrews Apostle Church  awarded  Kathleen Rumph the 2006 Dorothy Day Award on May 4^th.

Submitted by Eileen M Clinton