How did you meet ATD Fourth World?

I was a high school teacher in Brooklyn, New York. In the summer of 1972, I went to a conference where Fanchette was giving a talk. I was quite impressed by what she said - a description of the project that ATD Fourth World had at that time in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. 

The area at that time seemed under attack. There were numerous fires in the old tenement buildings, probably started by landlords wanting to get rid of unprofitable buildings or for the insurance. In some cases, the tenants set the fire. They were desperate to be rehoused by the city in better conditions. In some buildings, people went on rent strikes which resulted in the owners simply abandoning the buildings. Families would have their clothing packed, ready to evacuate in case of a fire in their building. There was an atmosphere of terror in the neighborhood. 

Fanchette described all this in her talk and I was impressed by the fact that these ATD Volunteers, Fanchette and her fellow volunteer, Maria Rosa, were living in the same Lower East Side neighborhood where they had their preschool program for the neighborhood children.

In the fall, I went to their drop-in apartment on East 4th Street. (The description of my first encounter with the ATD drop-in apartment can be read in The Human Face of Poverty). I had never been to this part of the Lower East Side before. Walking down the street, it was like another world: loud music, young guys hanging out, looking you over, burnt out cars in the street. And then I went into this tenement building and it was a complete difference in the apartment. It was quiet, beautiful. Things were adorned, simply, not richly. Things had been salvaged from trash in rich neighborhoods. In some cases, seats were wooden milk crates that had been painted in bright colors.

In the apartment were some of the young people I saw out on the street sitting there reading National Geographics and talking. And I thought that this apartment was a haven of peace compared to the street scene. That was my first impression. So I started to come after teaching and help out in whatever way. Sometimes, I would just sit and listen to the kids who dropped in. 

And then a disaster occurred: There was a fire in the building with the drop-in apartment. I helped the ATD volunteers move things up two streets to a friend's apartment where they found temporary shelter. A mother from the preschool program found the volunteers another apartment on the same street as well as an apartment for the preschool in the basement of the same building. The preschool eventually moved to a storefront, back on 4th Street.

All that would have discouraged others, but not these ATD Volunteer Corps members. That convinced me. I had to do something with this group. 

Why did you decide to work with ATD Fourth World?

I was impressed with the contact the ATD Volunteers had with the young people. They fit into a neighborhood where at the beginning I felt completely out of place. It was a different world for me. These ATD people, from other countries, could come to that place and become part of it, and have a really good relationship with the people. That impressed me. 

As a teacher, I wasn't seeing that population of young people. I was raised in a New York working class neighborhood. The Lower East Side was defined by its poverty, by its lacks. That was new to me.

The basis of the ATD Fourth World Movement is its presence with disadvantaged, often excluded, people. Everything starts from that presence.

What have you done with ATD Fourth World? 

Fanchette said that if I really wanted to do more with ATD, I should go to the ATD headquarters in France to understand the whole movement, not just the one aspect here in New York. I agreed and I went to France in July 1973 after getting some money together. In France they asked me to go to different places to get a real feel for the Movement. 

All my experiences in poor neighborhoods in France, at a homeless shelter in England, a housing project in Marseille mostly inhabited by Middle Eastern families, revealed a side of life I had had very little contact with. Also, there was the challenge: How do you deal with poverty that can seem so negative on the surface and confrontational? How do you respond by working with the people? 

It amazed me in a way: The ATD Volunteers didn’t give in. They didn’t say, “Enough, we are fed up with this.” That impressed me and I decided then to make it a full-time commitment.

I came back to the U.S. after six months at different ATD programs in Europe. On my return, I lived in the 4th Street drop-in apartment. It gave me a full view of life in the street. 

In 1974, ATD bought the house on 1st Avenue in Manhattan. We could now have a center to welcome people and train new Volunteer Corps members.

In the 1980’s we began a search for a property in the Washington, D.C. area. The place would be the U.S. ATD national center. In 1988 we found a large former farmhouse on Willow Hill Drive in Landover, Maryland. The price was good but the house needed repair. 

At the request of the ATD Secretary General, Fanchette and I went to the ATD headquarters in France in 1991. My project was to establish a simple network connecting the ATD teams. The internet was only beginning. Through the network I set up, the teams could send news and reports to be available to all teams on the network.

Fanchette and I were always thinking about extending ATD USA to Appalachia. Sister Bernie Kenny in Dickerson County, Virginia wanted ATD to establish a presence there. In 1995, we moved into a small house in the small town of McClure in Dickenson County that had been donated through Sister Bernie's efforts. The house needed many repairs which we mostly did ourselves. 

Sister Bernie introduced us to many local people and community projects. We volunteered at the Binns-Counts community center, Fanchette in their clothing sales and I started a computer introduction class for adults, using old computers that had been donated. 

The McClure house was a starting point, but we wanted something where we could develop our own project and welcome other volunteers and visitors. In 2006, ATD USA purchased an 18-acre mountainside property on Reedy Ridge. On the Reedy Ridge property, there was an old barn, a small frame house and enough flat land on which to build. We built a two-level building which included living quarters, a meeting space and kitchen area and a large basement workshop space.

The history of our time on Reedy Ridge is in a memoir which was recently completed. 

What has been transformative? How have you and/or your life changed?

You see things in a different way, a deeper way than you did before. You go beyond the surface to try to understand what is underneath. That’s the thing of ATD: It always wants to go further, it’s never satisfied with what it knows. It wants to go further and understand with the people what they are living. It is not a removed academic observation, but a living relationship with people struggling against poverty. 

You do things as a result of what you are seeing and understanding. For all of the projects that we began, the computer classes, the drop in center, the preschool, the family meetings, they all came from the need to first understand the experiences of people.

What are the highlights of your work with ATD Fourth World? What are/were the most important/favorite projects you’ve worked on?

• The encounter with the people. That overrides everything. It’s a way of being. It’s a way of living. You live to encounter people. You then do something with them. That’s the important thing, you do something with them, not for them.

• Visiting the families, being able to sit in the kitchen with them over a cup of coffee and hear their stories and what is currently happening in their lives, with kids coming in and out. Many times we went away impressed and feeling that something important had happened. Other times, the situation was too chaotic and we had to leave. But, we would come back. We were living part of their lives. We were understanding and learning and seeing what they really wanted. We did not go and simply ask them what they wanted. Nor did they expect us to come and give them something. The true wants of people emerge out of a dialogue built on mutual respect. 

• On a visit to us in New York, Father Joseph asked me why I was not doing computer classes with the young people. “You have to introduce these young people to computers, you have to do that.“ My reply (rather stupid when I now think of it) was that they did not need computers, they needed jobs.

He said, ”No, they need computers.” And he was right. The problem was that these young people were “all over the place.” They had little routine or order in their lives. Father Joseph was inviting me to think radically, to develop an approach to these young people the same way that the famous pedagogist Maria Montessori developed her methods with the slum children of Italy. 

Father Joseph had much greater insights than I had. 

You have been more than fifty years in ATD. What made you stay? 

The people that I met. They are amazing people. I wanted to continue with them. 

How have you shared your work with ATD Fourth World, with other people? 

We share our experience by meeting people and writing in our publications. The biggest challenge to the Movement, especially in the U.S. is to not stay trapped in your own little corner. You have to go out and meet people and bring people together. The idea of a “movement” is that, it’s something that flows, whose course is influenced by what is happening around it.