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Story of the day:
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LIFE-COLOR Jan-22-2004 (880 words) With photos. xxxn
Washington Catholics give warm welcome to March for Life participants
By Carol Zimmermann
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- When tens of thousands of pro-life marchers descend upon Washington each year for the annual March for Life, Dick and Peggy Blackford and Suzanne O'Connor are ready. In fact, they get ready weeks in advance.
The Blackfords and a handful of members of St. Joseph Church on Capitol Hill coordinate a hospitality center for marchers at their parish, and O'Connor, along with a volunteer group of about 40, provide a similar service at St. Peter Church, also on Capitol Hill.
The two churches, on opposite sides of the Capitol, know what many of these marchers want before getting on their buses after a long day of walking, listening to speeches and lobbying. And most often, it's a cup of coffee or hot chocolate.
St. Peter's has been providing such hospitality since the first March for Life in 1974 marking the anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 Roe vs. Wade and Doe vs. Bolton decisions that legalized abortion in the United States. Volunteer parishioners arrive at the church basement by 4 a.m. to set up coffee and doughnuts for early arriving marchers who begin shuffling into the parish throughout the morning.
O'Connor, who spoke to Catholic News Service midday Jan. 22, said she had 1,400 cups ready for the afternoon crowd. The marchers were still making their way from the Ellipse, the area between the White House and Washington Monument, to the Supreme Court, the final destination for the march. The coffee was brewing and 16 cases of 4-gallon juice bottles were at the ready.
St. Joseph's, located only a few blocks away from the Supreme Court, has been providing refreshments, only in the afternoon, for about 10 years, thanks to the help of dedicated volunteers, including one woman who makes her own Irish soda bread, which some marchers specifically ask for year after year.
"It's a hoot," Peggy Blackford said of the routine of keeping hundreds of marchers well fed each year.
In the hours before the marchers were set to arrive, Blackford was cutting 15 dozen muffins in half. She put out platefuls of some of the 30 dozen doughnuts, but many of them remained boxed up under a table. She and her husband also put out more cookies than they could count in the parish center, an area smaller than a two-car garage.
They said they're glad to help out because they know the marchers could use something warm and they both believe firmly in the pro-life cause.
"I keep praying every day for our judges and senators that refuse to listen to God" on the abortion issue, Dick Blackford said as he scooped coffee grounds into one of four 100-cup coffee makers that a local rental company loans to them free of charge.
And even though the March for Life is now in its 31st year of opposing abortion, Blackford said he was not discouraged.
"I'm heartened every year with the number of people who show up," he said, adding that the participants are "not people in their 80s either. These are young kids."
And sure enough, the crowd gathered on the Ellipse for the noon rally looked akin to a high school pep rally complete with chaperones.
The crowd assembled in small groups to take pictures of themselves, eat a quick lunch or hold aloft banners before the speeches began, and seemed more relaxed than in previous years, perhaps in part because of warmer temperatures. At midday, the temperature reached 40 degrees, quite unlike years when marchers faced below freezing weather or walked through snow.
But for some marchers the weather is not a big factor. Betty Herold, a parishioner at St. Augustine's in Barbertown, Ohio, who has been marching for the past 25 years, remembers marching in the snow and walking through mud on the Ellipse. But for most of the years the weather has been fine, she said, attributing this to a higher power.
"Our Blessed Mother looks out for us," she told CNS.
Herold stood at the side of Constitution Avenue along with thousands of others prior to the march, making the street look like a pre-parade gathering. She and other St. Augustine parishioners, while not of the teenage set, said the march invigorated them.
And a group of youths under the banner New Hampshire Teens for Life seemed equally invigorated.
"This is huge. I'm so glad I came," said Meghan McNamara, a freshman from St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Dover, N.H., at the Ellipse.
She and her friends said they had a mixed reaction from their friends back home about coming to the march, but hoped to get a pro-life group together when they got back.
For them and the rest of the New Hampshire contingency, the Democratic primary scheduled to take place five days after the march, was the last thing on their mind.
Father Volney DeRosia, a newly ordained priest and associate pastor at St. Michael Parish in Exeter, N.H., said, "We're not even thinking about the primary. Thanks be to God."
But that's not to say no one else was. As marchers made their way to the Ellipse, many of them passed a man holding onto a small toy donkey bearing the message "Democrats for Life."
END
Copyright (c) 2004 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method, in whole or in part without the prior written authority of Catholic News Service.
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