From battlefield to farm field
When Paul came back from World War II, he joined a commune.
By Todd Schulz, Photography by Jim Luning
Paul Melton was thousands of miles from home on an island in the Pacific Ocean when he discovered he wasn’t too keen on war.
Undoubtedly, countless American soldiers, sailors and pilots
experienced similar epiphanies during World War II. The difference is
how Paul reached his conclusion about conflict – and what he decided to
do about it.
A gung-ho teenager raised on Detroit’s east side, Paul volunteered to
enter the Army Air Corps in 1944 to help the U.S. battle Japan and
Germany. Eventually, he became a gunner on a bomber.
But
by the end of his service in 1946, Paul was a card-carrying pacifist.
One might assume his views changed by witnessing the horrors and
atrocities of war. But he never engaged in combat. Instead, the joys of
human commonality and connection changed his mind about the morality of
his mission.
Stationed on Guam, Paul befriended the
Japanese prisoners he was charged with guarding. He gained respect and
admiration for his enemies by watching them work as gardeners, builders
and artists.
“It was a kind of religious experience. I had a very good relationship
with some of the Japanese prisoners. Some were very talented and
accomplished. I learned about Japanese gardening and bonsai. I became
very interested in Japanese culture. I felt the war was evil and not
good and that we were not enemies of each other.”
Paul,
who was raised Catholic, soon told his chaplain, who encouraged him to
stick by his, well … guns. Upon returning home, Paul quickly found
friends who shared his convictions against war and his commitment to
peace. Many belonged to the Catholic Worker Movement, a group that has
shaped Paul’s life, faith and family for the last 60 years.
Paul was familiar with Catholic Worker before he entered the military
because his mother was a devotee of its founder, Dorothy Day. The
movement operated several houses of hospitality in Detroit, including
one at Holy Trinity Parish where the Meltons belonged.
“We’d go down there and bring food and clothing,” Paul says. “We got to know (Day) when she’d come to Detroit.”
So when he was fresh out of the Army Air Corps, it was natural for Paul
to start attending Catholic Worker meetings and begin reading authors
who argued passionately for its values. Eventually, he was offered the
chance to help start a Christian farming community in South Lyon. Paul
and his wife, Gloria, were given a five-acre plot on St. Benedict’s
Farm to begin their lives together. They were joined by four other
families who’d made the same commitment to embrace the “spirit of
poverty.”
“The
idea was to live poverty and be as independent as possible,” Paul says.
“We were going to weave our own fabric and make our own clothes out of
deerskin. We were city people, so we didn’t know how to do that. (But)
we got pretty good at agriculture, raising our own food and canning
goods in the summer.”
The Meltons started building their
family and their home, a project that took 15 years to complete. Not
that Melton considers it complete.
“We’re still always adding on to it and doing little things,” Melton said.
The couple raised six children despite spending years with no
electricity or indoor plumbing and having very little money. They
farmed the land with horses instead of tractors, stored vegetables in
their basements and shared livestock with their neighbors.
Ironically, Melton never considered himself a “member” of the Catholic Worker Movement.
“This
was not a movement you joined,” he says. “It didn’t seem there was a
point where, ‘You were or you weren’t.’ We felt close to them in spirit
and gave them lots of money when we had it. We were just trying to be
good Catholics. We felt the Catholic Worker had some radical ideas
about pacifism and war and peace. We discussed these ideas and argued
about them in a positive way.”
One of the most intriguing
ideas was voluntary poverty. Living poor is a key to spiritual growth,
Paul says. Choosing to live without money frees people to make radical
choices – “That includes not just things of enjoyment or pleasure like
art and creativity but also things for the Lord.
But as it turns out, staying poor can be hard work.
“Lady Poverty can disappear if you’re not careful,” Paul says with a
chuckle. “You think you have her and you have to give up and give away
and do without. There’s quite an art to practicing poverty. It becomes
wealth if you’re frugal and thrifty and you don’t waste. Gradually, we
became rich, successful in the eyes of the world.”
That’s partly due to the career Paul started out of a crisis in the
late 1950s. The family’s well ran dry and they needed $800 to drill a
replacement. So, Paul sold a horse to Greenfield Village to pay for the
well. Soon, he was raising, training and selling horses, many to “rich
kids” who competed in equestrian events.
It worked out better than raising cows, sheep and chickens – all of
which the Melton children wouldn’t eat because “They thought it was
their friend.”
Sparked
by his experience on Guam, Paul also operated a Japanese gardening
service over the years, designing and maintaining many projects.
Though he’s put some money in his pocket over the decades, he remains
committed to living “in a true spirit of poverty” and serving God –
“It’s a giving up, a denying of things.”
The Meltons still live in their house at St. Benedict’s Farm, where
they now own 10 acres. Most of their neighbors are still the original
settlers or their descendants.
Paul and Gloria have 14 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren; most of them live in southeast Michigan.
“Our kids didn’t always buy the poverty thing,” Paul says with a laugh.
“They weren’t as crazy about it as we were. But they’re all generous
and have a relationship to the poor in their life.”
Looking back, Paul says that a city kid moving to a communal farm was a
bit strange. But perhaps no more so than a pacifist in the Air Corps.
“I love the country,” he says, “and I loved the land.”
And he loves the Lord. After a lifetime of work, he’s rock-solid in his
Catholic faith and determined to live by the Catholic Worker values
he’s embraced for so many years.
“We’re trying very hard.”
Sidebars:
Who was Dorothy Day?
Dorothy Day was born in New York in 1897, raised in Chicago and
attended the University of Illinois. After two years of college, she
dropped out and headed for Greenwich Village in New York City, where
she became part of the bohemian movement that characterized the times.
She worked for socialist magazines and in 1917, she was jailed for her
participation in a protest against women’s exclusion from the
electorate. She became pregnant as the result of an affair and had an
abortion, which dramatically changed her life and became the subject
for her novel, The Eleventh Virgin. In 1924, Day began a common-law
marriage with Forster Batterham, an Englishman with whom she had a
child, Tamar. Day, who had been strongly drawn to the Catholic Church,
had her daughter baptized and then followed her into the church. She
became increasingly committed to promoting Catholic social teaching and
began The Catholic Worker newspaper with Peter Maurin. By 1936, there
were also 33 Catholic Worker houses in the U.S. Cardinal John O’Connor
of New York announced the cause for beatification for Dorothy Day,
Servant of God, in 2000 and received Vatican approval to initiate the
canonization process.
What do you think about the greatest generation?
We asked participants at Catechetical Days what
they thought of each generation:
More faithful?
100% of Gen Xers think members of the Greatest Generation are more faithful than other generations.
60% of teens think members of the Greatest Generation are more faithful than other generations.
100% of the Greatest Generation think members of the Greatest Generation are more faithful than other generations.
Less tolerant?
20% of teens think members of the Greatest Generation are less tolerant than other generations.
87.5% of the Greatest Generation think members of the Greatest Generation are less tolerant than other generations.
Less liberal?
60% of teens think members of the Greatest Generation are less liberal than other generations.
87.5% of the Greatest Generation think members of the Greatest Generation are less liberal than other generations
More generous?
55% of Baby Boomers think members of the Greatest Generation are more generous than other generations.
100% of teens think members of the Greatest Generation are more generous than other generations.
100% of the Greatest Generation think members of the Greatest Generation are more generous than other generations.
Better Catholics?
68% of Baby Boomers think members of the Greatest Generation are better Catholics than other generations.
80% of teens think members of the Greatest Generation are better Catholics than other generations.
In 1944, what was
the price of …?
• Flour was 32 cents per pound
• Bread was 9 cents per pound
• Bacon was 41 cents per pound
• Butter was 50 cents per pound
• Eggs were 54 cents per dozen
• Milk (delivered to your door) was 31 cents per half-gallon
• Oranges were 46 cents per dozen
• Potatoes were 46 cents for 10 pounds
• A can of tomatoes was 10 cents
• Coffee was 30 cents per pound
From kamikaze attacks to spark plugs
By Nancy Schertzing | Photography by Tom Gennara
 Seven
major battles, a deadly typhoon and a kamikaze attack. Dominic
Militello survived them all during World War II. More than 60 years
later, Dominic has no doubt why he made it through unscathed.
“I had somebody at home praying for me,” he says.
That somebody was Dominic’s mother, Mary, who attended daily Mass to
pray for Dominic and his brother, who was serving in the U.S. Army.
“She was a wonderful woman, a really devout Catholic,” says Dominic, 83, who now lives in Swartz Creek.
When
Japan attacked the U.S. at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Dominic – like
thousands of young men – was enraged. But as a student at St. Joseph
School in his hometown of Bay City, he was also too young to join the
fight.
“I was gung-ho,” he remembers. “If they would have
let me quit school and go right then, I would have. You’re really
worked up when your country is being attacked.”
Dominic entered the fray soon enough, drafted to the U.S. Navy shortly
after high-school graduation in 1943. Eventually, he wound up sailing
with the Third Fleet under the famous Admiral William “Bull” Halsey,
who led the fight against the Japanese in the Pacific Theater.
“He wanted to catch the Japanese fleet,” Dominic says. “He was the kind
of guy who would go through anything to kill the (enemy).”
During
one fight, Dominic’s ship, the New Jersey, was struck by a Japanese
kamikaze pilot who slipped through the hail of machine gun fire.
Fortunately, it was not a direct blow.
“He just barely skidded the side,” Dominic says. “We were in danger a lot, but we only got hit that one time.”
While his mother prayed vigilantly, Dominic – a longtime member of
Flint’s St. Pius X Parish – hit his knees plenty when the shooting
started.
“You’d better believe we prayed,” he says with a chuckle. “Every time I went through a battle, I thanked God.”
 On
one tragic occasion, the weather was the enemy. In December 1944, a
typhoon struck the Third Fleet near the Philippines, sinking three
destroyers, wiping out almost 150 planes and killing nearly 800 men.
The storm’s winds reached 140 miles per hour, but Dominic was unharmed.
Dominic witnessed Japan’s surrender to Gen. Douglas
MacArthur: “At the time, (the ceremonial surrender) didn’t seem like
too much because our thoughts were just to get home,” says Dominic, who
later worked more than 30 years at the AC Spark Plug factory in Flint.
“Over the years, it’s gotten to be more famous.”
From U-Boats to the UAW
Thaddeus' faith has seen him through many fights.
By Todd Schulz | Photography by Tom Gennara
 Thaddeus Modrak’s faith got him through the fight of his life.
Thaddeus was drafted into the U.S. Navy shortly after graduating high
school in 1943. Upon entering the service, he was given a scapular,
which he quickly stuck in his wallet for safekeeping.
More than 60 years later, that’s exactly where it remains, a powerful
reminder of the rock-solid belief that protected and later helped build
his life.
“It’s so beat up, you can hardly make it out,” Thaddeus says of the scapular. “But it’s still in there.”
Ditto for his trust in God. Thaddeus, 82, lives in Burton, just south
of Flint, where he worked in General Motors’ Fisher Body plant for
nearly 40 years. After World War II, he returned home and rolled up his
sleeves in the fight for fair wages as a member of the United Auto
Workers.
As a young sailor, Thaddeus served on a destroyer escort that hunted
German submarines in the icy waters of the North Atlantic. His ship
helped sink at least one enemy U-boat.
Maybe it was that scapular tucked close to his body. But looking back,
Thaddeus marvels at his lack of fear under fire.
“Youth
accepts the adventure, really not knowing what’s involved on the
dangerous side. When they started showing Victory at Sea [on
television] and showed sub warfare, I started thinking: ‘I wonder how
many times we were in the sights of some submarine and didn’t even know
it?’ We didn’t think that much of it at the time. We just did what we
had to do.”
Thaddeus, a torpedoman second class who served
from 1943-46, clung to his Catholic faith – “I just accepted everything
as it came about as God’s plan. I always felt everybody has some type
of plan and you go along with it.”
Thaddeus returned to his hometown after the war but found few jobs in
Cheboygan. So he headed south for Flint, where the auto industry was
booming, work was plentiful and the UAW was “very powerful.”
“The
gains workers enjoy today were accomplished by workers through the
years,” he said. “Each contract, we gained a little more, a little
more, until we ended up with a lot of benefits a lot of jobs didn’t
have.”
Thaddeus and his wife, Fairbelle, have three
children, seven grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. They have
been parishioners at Holy Redeemer Parish in Burton for 45 years.
What's changed in Sister Teddy's 58 years in the convent?
By Eileen Gianiodis | Photography by Philip Shippert
 Nearly everything about the way her life was in 1949 has changed –including her name – and she still loves it.
When Theodora McKennan, a Chicago native, joined the Adrian Dominicans,
life as a sister was a bit different than it is today. In fact, nearly
everything, from what she did, when she did it, what she wore and what
work she did, has changed drastically.
“I loved the life, but there were so many things that were out of joint,” Sister Teddy recalls.
During her postulant and novitiate years, Sister Teddy and other
candidates were given new names when they were received into their
congregations.
“It didn’t seem weird because I knew it would happen,” she says. “I
suppose it was a way of breaking with the past. We submitted three
names and the Mother General, as she was then called, decided which one
we would have.”
Sister Teddy asked for Ellen Louise as a name because her mother’s name
was Helen Louise and her sister’s name was Mary Ellen.
“I
had asked my Methodist dad if he’d like it if I were named for him –
Sister Harold – but he thought it would be bizarre for a woman to have
a man’s name.”
Sister Teddy’s name wasn’t the only thing that changed over the years. Her schedule did as well.
The sisters used to rise at 5:15 a.m., have 20 minutes to get dressed
and be in the chapel for morning prayer and meditation. By Sister
Teddy’s own admission, it was a struggle to make it.
“I was never the first one there,” she laughs.
Maybe it was the habit – during her postulant year, she wore a black
dress and apron and a simple black veil. After being received into the
novitiate, she was clothed in the Dominican habit: a white,
long-sleeved tunic fastened by a leather belt and covered by a long,
straight white scapular and a high-necked collar, which covered her
shoulders and upper torso.
“It was really a beautiful challenge to keep it clean, since in the
novitiate, we wore it all week long before laundering it,” Sister Teddy
says.
Novices also wore a white veil lined with heavily starched linen and
“supported on our heads by a complicated structure of starched linen
which kept it raised above our foreheads. It looked nice if you were
good at keeping it straight. I wasn’t.”
After their profession of vows, the sisters traded the white veil for a black one.
Sister Teddy found the Adrian Dominicans to be a perfect fit for her naturally intellectual inclinations.
It was her late parents who instilled a love of learning in a clearly gifted learner.
When she joined the Adrian Dominicans at age 20, she already had three
years of college under her belt. She was sent immediately to Owosso to
teach.
When she returned to Adrian for her novitiate year, Sister Teddy earned
her undergraduate degree from Siena Heights College. During her
novitiate, the sisters in her “crowd,” or class, kept silence most of
the day and had an hour of recreation in the evening.
“Sometimes we would have a short period of recreation after lunch, when
we weren’t busy attending class, scrubbing and cleaning, or working
somewhere on the campus,” she says.
Soon afterward, Sister Teddy received her assignment to continue
teaching and earn her master’s degree at the University of Notre Dame
during the summer. After completion of that degree, she went on to earn
a doctorate in Latin American studies from Loyola University of
Chicago, also during the summers. She spent a year studying in Bogotá,
Colombia during that time.
During
the school year, Sister Teddy taught in Detroit; Des Moines, Iowa; Ft.
Lauderdale, Fla. and finally landed in Escanaba for six years, where
she taught high school.
“We received our assignments on a
specified date in an envelope,” Sister Teddy remembers. “My parents
would wait, with the map, to see where I would be the next year.”
Ministries, as they’re called now, are not assigned anymore. Prior to
Vatican II, the Mother General might ask the nuns to give her a few
choices of where to send them.
“We are encouraged to seek our own ministries now,” Sister Teddy says.
How have things changed? In the years following Vatican II, all
religious orders were given a mandate from Rome to review their way of
life.
“It was a mandate to renovate,” Sister Teddy says. “We made more of our
own choices about prayer. It was more relaxing, contemporary and more
real.”
The Adrian Dominicans “renovated” during their renewal chapters for
three summers beginning in 1968 – nearly 20 years after Sister Teddy
first set foot inside the convent.
“There
were so many changes during that time. As laity, we couldn’t
participate in much before Vatican II. Now we all help shoulder the
responsibility as a church. We’re all people of God … and that’s a
great thing.”
There are many other “great things” about being a
member of the community, Sister Teddy says. Both now and years ago,
celebrating the holidays is especially nice.
“The sisters in charge of the chapel, refectory and other parts of the
house outdid each other in decorating these areas and we had lovely
festive meals.”
After teaching for many years, Sister Teddy was sent to Lima, Peru,
where she served for nine years in a Maryknoll mission.
“It was a very poor area outside of Lima – there were many squatter’s
settlements where we were and our job was to minister to the people
there.”
In
Peru, Sister Teddy started a women’s group and a youth choir and helped
start a school for special-needs children. She taught religious
education at night to young people and worked to get clean, running
water into the squatter’s settlements.
A dozen years
later, Sister Teddy returned to the Midwest as her mother’s health
began to fail. At 102, Helen Louise McKennan had seen her daughter
through almost half a century of being a nun.
After her mother’s death, Sister Teddy remained in the Midwest. She
worked in Madison, Wis., and in Chicago with Spanish-speaking
congregations at many parishes.
Now, in her retirement, Sister Teddy serves the Adrian Dominicans as
the manager of the Catherine of Siena Library.
At 78, she refers to the time she now spends doing her job as “banker’s hours.”
The Adrian Dominican Sisters belong to the Order of Preachers founded by St. Dominic.
The branches of the Dominican family include: brothers, contemplative
nuns, congregations of contemplative and apostolic Sisters, lay persons
in fraternities or secular institutes, and secular priests in
fraternities. “Each one has its own character, its own autonomy.
However, by taking part in the charism of St. Dominic, they share
between them a single vocation to be preachers in the church” (Chapter
of Mexico, 1992). For more information on the international Dominican
family, visit www.op.org.
The DSA supports vocations through the diocesan Office of Formation.
Visit www.DioceseOfLansing.org for more information.
Frame of faith. 
Worth more than a thousand words.
Michelle Sessions DiFranco | Photography by Phillip
Shippert
I
remember getting scolded by my grandmother at a very young age for what
she considered the mother of all profane utterances – taking our Lord’s
name in vain. “Oh my G _ _” wasn’t followed by a bar of soap and a
lashing. However, she made it very clear that I shouldn’t be verbally
disrespecting God – no matter what.
There were a couple of other
instances in my youth where my grandparents rebuked my actions. Whether
it was wearing jeans to Saturday-night Mass or chewing gum beforehand,
I would get the usual lecture; then I would politely nod and just go
about my business. I will admit, I felt annoyed at times, but I just
took it for face value – that their generation and mine were worlds
apart, and that their ways were a bit rigid and old-fashioned.
 It
wasn’t until long after my grandfather died that I started to grow
deeper in my faith. It was then that I came to the realization that it
wasn’t that my grandparents were “being old fashioned,” but that they
were only trying to protect us and help us in our faith formation. And
I was going to later find out that their watchful eyes and “rigid”
instruction had actually planted a seed, which would soon grow into
something so valuable.
Today, when I visit my grandmother or look
at a photo of her and Grandpa as a couple, I am reminded of, and
thankful for, the guidance they gave me. Indeed, the greatest gifts our
ancestors have given are not found among the mothballed heirlooms that
crowd our closets, but in the intangible gifts of our Catholic faith
and tradition.
Like me, perhaps many of you recognize this and think about this gift
when you stare at the old photos of loved ones who have died. Does the
black and white picture merely collect dust and cover a blemish on the
wall, or does it remind us to pray for and thank our loving relatives
who gave us so much. Perhaps the way in which we adorn their photo can
be reminiscent of this incredible gift that our prior generations have
given us ...
Directions:
For this project,
you will need the following:
• Vintage or “distressed” 5x7” picture frame
• Assorted crucifix or cross pendants (can be purchased at Catholic bookstores or online)
• Small- to medium-sized wire cutters
• Jewelry or metal glue (follow directions on tube – some are resin with hardener)
Begin by using the wire cutters to remove the loops/rings from the
selected crucifix/cross pendants. Arrange the pendants in any fashion
on the picture frame. Apply small drops of the glue on the back of the
pendants and gently place on frame. Wait a couple of hours for glue to
harden or set.
Other Ideas:
Create your own vintage frame. Give an unfinished frame a distressed
look by gashing it with a straight bladed screwdriver before staining
it.
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