1999 Dorothy Day Award
Mary Maples

A Life Committed to Social Justice

Mary Maples was one of the first facilitators of the Head Start Program that began during Lyndon Johnson's administration.  "Head Start's first center was in Syracuse," Maples said.  "The national director was a friend of mine."  Maples moved to New York City in the mid-1960s to get the program rolling among the impoverished families in the inner city.  She still works with Head Start on a consulting basis.  Maples has traveled extensively in her work monitoring the programs in places like Guam, Puerto Rico and Alaska. 

She is 73 years old today and still logs miles away from home each month.  Her study is filled with treasures from Native American pottery to black coral from 15,000 feet below the sea's surface.  She is not a maker of the mundane.  "I was with Caesar Chavez in the winter of 1966," Maples remembered.  "I lived in a Quonset hut.  My job was tgo clean up these two trailers he had.  I made curtains and cleaned.  The migrant workers are the poorest of the poor.  All Chavez wanted was to own one book.  They lived in their cars.  Seven people in one car.  They are in the car and they slept in the car."

Maples also marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma and Montgomery.  She protested the Vietnam War and she sat in on several of the Friday night "clarification of thought" gatherings at Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker house in New York City in the 1960s and '70s.  "maybe Dan Berrigan would speak or Eileen Eagan, or the head of Orbis books.  They would talk about peace and justice.  There would be maybe 30 to 60 people there depending upon what the topic was," Maples said.

Maples has been a parishioner of St. Lucy's for the past 18 years.  she is well acquainted with the outreach programs that are based at the parish.  She has served on the board of directors for groups like the Metropolitan School for the arts, tghe Consortium for Children's Services, Alliance, the Task Force Against Child Abuse and the National Task Force of Head Start.  Her early work includes founding the Dorothy Day House on Salina Street.  Maples, Nancy Murray, Delores Morgan and Sister Lee Connolly, CSJ, began with an apartment  in 1981 that was to house homeless women and their children.  Maple's life work has always focused on caring for low income children and their families.

Today, Dorothy Day House is a short-term crisis residential program under the umbrella of Catholic Charities.  Its outreach program, Homeward Connections, ensures that the women who leave shelters like Dorothy Day House for their own apartments have the ongoing support they need to make it.  The outreach program helps women all over Onondaga County.

Maples grew up in Croghan, in the foothills of the Adirondacks.  She has two brothers, one living in Lafayette and another in Lansing, Mich.  Her mother's example sent a clear message to her.  I met Dorothy Day in 1951 when my mother sent me to see her in New York City.  She had knit about 40 pairs of mittens and wanted me to deliver them when I went to the city to visit my roommate," Maples remembered.  "I walked down the street and all of these men came up to me asking for a nickel.  I told them I was there to see Dorothy Day and they cleared a path for me.  She was so busy I don't even remember if she spoke to me."

As a part of Syracuse's rich history of social justice and work for peace, Maples is an example of living faith each day.  "I followed my heart.  I pray about everything.  My mother used to say that you will get everything you pray for.  It may not come through your way, but God's way," Maples said.

Today, Maples is an integral part of the support network that sustains Unity Acres.  Kate Stanton and Father Ray McVey were long-time friends of Maples and she continues to work supporting the home for homeless men founded by her two friends.  She is a source of help to the current director, Stephen Dickhout.  "Mary is a woman of remarkable talents, interests, and experiences," Dickhout said.  "She's a good person to bounce ideas off of.  More than once her experience as a psychiatric social worker has been a help.  She understands what the men here have gone through.   She has a real feel for the stresses and strains of those grappling with mental health problems and addictions.  And, nothing surprises her.  You can talk to her about anything.  She's a very kind and generous person."

The accolades that come from living a life committed to helping others is taken in stride by Maples.  She prefers to stress the example Dorothy Day gave to others.  "I love this quote by Dorothy," Maples said.  "It really says it all and it's the way I feel too: 'We must live this life now.  Death changes nothing.  If we don not learn to enjoy God now we never will.  If we do not learn to praise Him and thank Him and rejoice in Him now, we never will.'"

                                   --from an article by Connie Cissell Meaney in the Catholic Sun, April 29, 1999