Category: Memorial

This issue dedicated to the memory of Dr. Morris Wessel, Judi Friedman and Lou Friedman

The PAR Planning Committee dedicates this September issue to Dr. Morris Wessel, Judi Friedman and Lou Friedman. These three people devoted their careers and their lives to help create a safer, healthier, more peaceful world.

morris-wesselProgressive Action Roundtable extends its condolences to the family of Dr. Morris Wessel, who passed on at age 98 on August 20. Dr. Wessel was a pediatrician in New Haven for forty-two years. In the 1970s he investigated the lead levels in children, and in 1974 helped found The Connecticut Hospice, the first hospice in the United States. He and his wife, social worker Irmgard Rosenzweig Wessel who died in 2014, were greatly respected and admired by many of us in the PAR community. He is survived by four children, David, Bruce, Paul and Lois; eight grandchildren; two great-grandchildren and hundreds of former patients. Contributions may be made to the Morris and Irmgard Wessel Fund, a donor-advised fund at the Community Foundation of Greater New Haven, which makes annual awards to unsung heroes who are improving life for residents of the city. For more about Dr. Wessel: http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/morris_wessel

friedman-judi-louIt is with great sadness that PAR learned of the passing of Judi and Lou Friedman of Canton on July 25. They both suffered with painful and debilitating health issues. Judi led the People’s Action for Clean Energy organization for forty-three years and has regularly written articles for the PAR newsletter. Lou was co-founder of Beyond Nuclear, a national non-profit promoting a nuclear-free world. For decades, PACE has been a resource for information and action on clean-energy issues and energy efficiency. Judi and Lou helped educate many of us about the dangers of nuclear power. At its annual meeting in the fall, PACE will be honoring the lives of Judi and Lou.

For more information, contact Mark Scully, Chairman of PACE, at [email protected].

Daniel Berrigan, Poet

by Stephen Vincent Kobasa

Poetry was in everything that Daniel Berrigan did, and not only in his writing. He knew from the Old Testament prophets– Isaiah, of course, but also the less familiar, fierce voices of Daniel, Hosea, Micah, none of them “minor” in their demands or their fidelity – that metaphors were another way to change the world, and that even voices of condemnation needed music to make the conscience turn and listen.

The Catonsville 9 Statement, with its chill irony of apology for “the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house,” was written to take the place of an original draft that Berrigan found wanting. It was not enough to do the action, it was essential to make the words fit the doing.

He was in one respect a selfish man, as the Golden Rule is selfish, using the treatment we expect for ourselves as the measure of how others are treated. And, like Thoreau, he broke the law, first of all, to disassociate himself from murder in the name of the state. He would have called this, as required by his Catholic faith, acting to save his soul.

Darkness was familiar to him; he made no secret of this. And he lived in a time, as we do, that hope is not easy. But that never kept him from doing what was required.

We exchanged poems from time to time and he was always more generous in praise of mine than they deserved. But to be told that there were words he found in them that mattered was the kind of wild grace he granted to everyone he touched through all his days.

And he wrote his own best elegy, as one would expect:

The poem called death
is unwritten yet. Some day will show
the violent last line,
the shadow rise,
a bird of omen
snatch me for its ghost.
And a hand somewhere, purposeful as God’s
close like two eyes, this book.

Love, Daniel: In Remembrance of “Father Dan,” 1921–2016

by Joan Cavanagh (one of the NH Sunday Vigilers at Broadway, Park and Elm Streets)

“Eternity is a rose, Dante says/ We will wear/ give/ Yes, have time for.” Daniel Berrigan

daniel-berrigan-democracy-nowIn May 1968, in Catonsville, Maryland, 20 miles from my home town, nine people napalmed draft records of young men headed for Vietnam. Father Daniel Berrigan, one of the nine, named it “the burning of paper instead of children.” Dan was in North Vietnam earlier in 1968, and had held a Vietnamese child in a shelter while American pilots dropped bombs overhead.

Those non-electronic records could not be reconstructed. Hundreds of Americans were presumably exempted from going to war.

This incendiary act of nonviolent civil disobedience forced us all to witness what napalm did to paper and to imagine what it did to flesh and blood in our names as United States citizens. My 14-year-old view of the war as a nightmare that might one day claim the lives of some of my older class-mates evolved into a deeper awareness that it had already made a nightmare of other young lives: the unnamed and unseen Vietnamese.

In August 1973, eight months after the Paris Peace Accords, the U.S. war on Indochina continued. 100 people were arrested at the White House. The day of our first Federal Court appearance, the elevator stalled between floors. Dan flashed his signature elfish grin, then glanced heavenward with outstretched hands, palms up.

Draft board raids eventually gave way to raids on other offices prosecuting the war more covertly. I turned 21 in April 1975 while serving a 52-day sentence in the Women’s Detention Center in Washington D.C. Dan, veteran of a much longer, much more serious prison stay, sent poetry and a letter: “Dear Joan, I don’t know if they let poems into Caesar’s Harem. I hope so. Sometimes it helps…When you get out, springtime will be upon us all. That will be worth waiting for. We’ll all have a bash! Love, Daniel.”

Dan visited Jonah House and Advaita House in Baltimore several times while I lived there. His lightness of being often defused community conflicts and restored clarity of purpose sometimes abandoned in favor of argumentation and self-righteousness. His pecan pies were a sinfully rich delicacy which sweetened continued discord.

Sometimes I walked with him to the Baltimore train station for his return trip to NYC. Dan carried very little baggage.

I did not see him or talk with him for nearly four decades. We disagreed on his approach to abortion in the 1980s. I wish I had known him again in his later years, our beloved old “radical priest” caring for AIDS and cancer patients, joining the occupiers at Zuccotti Park, continuing to resist endless war – still living out the kindness and clarity of his poetry in action. Now his absence has come to stay: a sadly welcomed eternal presence.

In Remembrance of Sara Gregory

Susan Klein, NH Sunday Vigil and GNH Peace Council

Sara Kane Gregory, 58 years old, died at her home in New Haven on Jan. 4, 2016. She was born in Baltimore, MD, spent her teenage years in Naples, Fla, and earned a Masters of Education from the University of New Hampshire.

sara-kane-gregory-small

Sara with OccupyNH on the Green (Paula Panzarella photo)

Confined to a wheelchair after a car accident 25 years ago, Sara was known to hundreds here as a friend, a fellow activist, and an inspiration. In fact, she refused to be confined, going wherever she chose via public transportation, van, bus and train, despite difficulties with access. She even swam 3-4 times every week, in every season. Sara could recall choosing to live while in a coma after the accident, and live she did, to the utmost, with fierce independence and determination; she wanted no one to feel sorry for her.

Sara was an enthusiastic participant in political meetings, marches and rallies, in CT, in NY, in DC, and was particularly involved with Occupy New Haven in 2011 and 2012 visiting the encampment on the Green almost every day. She was passionate about peace, justice and equality, and never hesitated to speak her mind for all to hear. She voted in every election.

A great reader, Sara’s favorite authors included Dickens, Hardy, George Eliot and Jane Austen. She indulged in incisive, thoughtful literary and philosophical discussions at every opportunity. She also loved cats, drinking tea and baking bread. Sara had a deep and lasting influence on those lucky enough to know her; this vibrant and feisty woman will be sorely missed. Her family asks that you kindly donate a book to your local library in remembrance of Sara.

NICHOLAS AIELLO, Dec. 14, 1924-Nov. 5, 2015

by Joan Cavanagh, archivist and director, GNHLHA

nicholas-aielloWith great sadness the Greater New Haven Labor History Association records the death of our co-founder, President Emeritus and inspiration, Nicholas Aiello.

Nick was a long time organizer and business agent for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America Local 125. Raised on Wallace Street, he came from a family of Italian-American garment workers. From a family of 14, Nick had seven sisters, all of whom worked in the industry for years. The pre-union conditions were “horrible,” as Nick described in an interview published in Anthony Riccio’s The Italian American Experience in New Haven: Images and Oral Histories, 2006:

“When New York got completely organized, the ‘runaway shops’… ran to New Haven where there were no union shops. And they would open up a storefront. They’d put twenty, thirty machines on the fourth floor and most of the stitching plants were on the fourth floor with no elevator … Then in the 1930s came the Amalgamated and they started organizing drives in the area.”

Nick also brought his passion as a union organizer to other endeavors, as a member of the New Haven Board of Aldermen, as Commissioner for the New Haven Housing Authority and as a leader for the Greater New Haven Central Labor Council.

In 1988, recognizing the importance of keeping labor and working class history alive for present and future generations, Nick co-founded the Greater New Haven Labor History Association with other labor activists. He was active in the organization for the rest of his life.

GNHLHA will honor Nick as part of our 2016 annual conference and meeting. Tentative date: June 5th.

This issue of PAR is dedicated to Anne Somsel and John Hiller

This issue of PAR is dedicated to Anne Somsel and John Hiller, two exceptional New Haven people who passed on in August. Anne was active in many peace, solidarity and justice groups that bridged borders between nations and classes. Her kindness was known by most of our local PAR readers.

anne-somselAnne Elizabeth Somsel, 63, of New Haven, passed away Aug. 6, 2015 in Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale. She was the beloved wife of Stephen Vincent Kobasa. Born in Dayton, Ohio on June 10, 1952, she was the daughter of Clarence Somsel, M.D. and Rita Kessler, one of seven sisters. She held degrees in nursing from the College of Mt. St. Joseph in Cincinnati and Arizona State University. She pursued her vocation in many communities, including the Hospital California in Comalapa, Guatemala; the Frontier Nursing Service in Hyden, Kentucky; the Migrant Health Project in Dover, Delaware and for 29 years at the Fair Haven Community Health Center. Most recently, she was Director of Public Health Nursing for the City of New Haven. For several years, she has served as a Eucharistic Minister at St. Thomas More Chapel at Yale. Besides her husband, she is survived by two daughters, Clare Marie Kobasa and Rachel Becket Kobasa; her sisters, Joan, Jane, Michelle, Peggy and Katie; and her brother-in-law, Paul Kobasa. Gifts in Anne’s honor may be made to Breast Cancer Action, 657 Mission St., Suite 302, San Francisco, CA. 94105. or to Partners in Health, P.O. Box 845578, Boston, MA 02284-5578.

john-hillerJohn R. Hiller of New Haven died on Saturday, August 15 at Yale New Haven Hospital.

John was active in many local labor, peace and environmental organizations, and was an editor during the early years of the PAR newsletter and continued to be on our mailing committee. The PAR Planning Committee sends condolences to Anne’s husband Stephen Kobasa and their daughters Clare and Rachel, and to John’s wife Marge and their daughters Asa and Illa, and Illa’s husband Charles.

He was the husband of Marge Morann Hiller of New Haven and the father of Asa Paradis of Wallingford and Illa Hiller (husband Charles Tirrell) of Northford. He was the brother of Carol Holloman of Hamden and the grandfather of Clara Margery Hughes. John was born in Chicago on July 23, 1941, a son of Cletus and Mabel Beery Hiller. He resided in New Haven for the past 50 years, coming from Chicago. He worked for the New Haven Parks Department for more than 30 years. After retiring, he was a lifeguard and taught swimming for many years. With his daughters, he was very involved with the Girl Scouts of America.

Read the Obituary and view the Guest Book, leave condolences or send flowers. | SOMSEL, ANNE E. Anne Elizabeth Somsel, 63, of New Haven, passed away Aug. 6, 2015 in Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale. She was the beloved wife of Stephen Vincent Kobasa. Born in Dayton, Ohio on June

Source: ANNE ELIZABETH SOMSEL’s Obituary on NHRegister.com

 

Read the Obituary and view the Guest Book, leave condolences or send flowers. | HILLER, JOHN R. John R. Hiller of New Haven died on Saturday, August 15 at Yale New Haven Hospital. He was the husband of Marge Morann Hiller of New Haven. He was the father of Asa Paradis of

Source: JOHN R. HILLER’s Obituary on NHRegister.com

Tribute to Charlotte Brown

by Coalition for People

charlotte-brownWe mourn the loss of our dear friend, Charlotte Brown, who passed away on May 10, 2015. She was an active member of the Coalition for People and served as the Treasurer for many years. She participated in the Coalition for People’s long struggle to have New Haven’s downtown bus stops returned to the New Haven Green (which was accomplished in 2007) and participated in organizing efforts to have a National Single Payer Healthcare system. She retired from St. Raphael’s Hospital after many years and traveled the world. She is survived by her daughters Charlyne Brooks and Lunda Brown. We will miss her beautiful smile and sweet, lovely personality.

Milada Marsalka’s Memoirs Now Available in New Haven

by PAR Planning Committee

Milada Marsalka, founding member of PAR (1993), long-time president of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, New Haven County Branch, and a fiery activist in countless struggles for peace, labor rights, equality and justice, had the foresight to write about her life. She died in 2000 at the age of 95, leaving a manuscript that could inform and inspire others.

Through the diligence of Milada’s nieces, Regina Stevenson and Catherine Nathan, Pursuing Peace:
Memoirs of Milada Marsalka has been published.

Thanks to New Haven/León Sister City Project, a box of books was shipped to New Haven. You can purchase your copy of Pursuing Peace from PAR for $15. Please call Paula at (203) 562-2798 to arrange your pick-up. This book makes a great gift! For a description of the book go to the publisher’s site: http://wordassociation.com/memoir%20book%20page/pursuingpeace.html.

Tomas Young – 11 Sept 1979 – 10 Sept 2014

by Augusta Girard, Program Director, Promoting Enduring Peace

In November 2013, Promoting Enduring Peace presented TV personality and producer director Phil Donahue for its first Mark Shafer lecture. Mr Donahue presented his award-winning documentary about Tomas Young, “Body of War.” Young was the voice for all the thousands of injured and dead soldiers.

Young joined the army when he was 22, two days after the 9/11 attacks. He had been in Iraq less than a week when he and fellow soldiers came under sniper fire. He was paralyzed from the chest down after being hit by a bullet in his spine.

tomas-young“Body of War” follows Young as a 25-year-old as he deals with his disability and finds his voice speaking out against the Iraq war and became an active member of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

On the tenth anniversary of the Iraq War, Truthdig published “The Last Letter” by Tomas Young directed towards George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

“I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans-my fellow veterans-whose future you stole…

“I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.”

Promoting Enduring Peace joins the world in mourning a young man who should not have lost his life fighting in a war that should never have been fought.

Karen Brandow 1954-2014


forwarded by Western Massachusetts Jobs With Justice

We are heartbroken…
www.legacy.com/obituaries/gazettenet/obituary.aspx?n=karen-brandow&pid=173000132

Karen Brandow, 60, passed away peacefully Sunday, Oct. 26, 2014, at home in Shelburne Falls.

She was born in Philadelphia, PA, in 1954 and spent most of her adult life in western Massachusetts and in Guatemala. She devoted her life to making this world a better place through her singing, counseling, and Spanish interpreting.

Karen was a loving partner to Charlie King, a devoted daughter, and a loyal friend whose calm presence was appreciated by her community and supported by her Buddhist practice. She was grateful for all of the blessings and privileges of her life which she attempted to use to be of service to others.

She died as she lived – making conscious choices about medical treatment based on her most deeply held values. She wishes to be remembered for adding in her “grain of sand” to the ongoing search for peace and justice in this world.

She asks that anyone wishing to honor her memory make a donation in her name to The Innocence Project in New York, 40 Worth St., Suite 701, New York, NY 10013, or to Chris-tian Peacemaker Teams, P.O. Box 6508, Chicago, IL 60680-6508. A memorial service will be held Dec. 20, at 2 p.m. at Trinity Church, 17 Severance St., Shelburne Falls, MA.

Milada Marsalka’s Memoirs Now Available in New Haven

by the PAR Planning Committee

Milada Marsalka, founding member of PAR (1993), long-time president of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, New Haven County Branch, and a fiery activist in countless struggles for peace, labor rights, equality and justice, had the foresight to write about her life. She died in 2000 at the age of 95, leaving a manuscript that could inform and inspire others.

Through the diligence of Milada’s nieces, Regina Stevenson and Catherine Nathan, “Pursuing Peace: Memoirs of Milada Marsalka” has been published.

Thanks to New Haven/León Sister City Project, a box of books was shipped to New Haven. You can purchase your copy of Pursuing Peace from PAR for $15. Please call Paula at (203) 562-2798 to arrange your pick-up. This book makes a great gift!

For a description of the book go to the publisher’s site: https://wordassociation.com/memoir%20book%20page/pursuingpeace.html.

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