BOOK REVIEW: ‘Hope for the City: A Catholic Priest, a Suburban Housewife and their Desperate Effort

OPINION:

HOPE FOR THE CITY: A CATHOLIC PRIEST, A SUBURBAN HOUSEWIFE AND THEIR DESPERATE EFFORT TO SAVE DETROIT

By Jack Kresnak

Cass Community Publishing House, $24.95, 436 pages, illustrated

In 1967 when a mixed-race couple moved into Warren, Michigan, a suburb north of the Detroit Eight Mile border, their arrival caused a race riot that “created a horrible atmosphere for them.” So notes Jack Kresnak, the author of “Hope for the City: A Catholic Priest, A Suburban Housewife and Their Desperate Effort to Save Detroit.” A reporter and editor at the Detroit Free Press for 38 years, Mr. Kresnak chronicles the groundbreaking work of the individuals who worked to restore peace in the city.

Helping renew the Detroit community after the riot, was the initial project of Focus: HOPE, a civil and human rights organization that fed seniors, infants and children, and provided job manufacturing training. Multiple buildings, including a day care center and the Church of the Madonna, grew into a 40-acre campus. At the center of Mr. Kresnak’s account of the organization are pastor and seminary instructor, Father William Cunningham, and Eleanor Josaitis, a suburban mother of five children who convinced her husband, Don, to move from Taylor, Michigan back into Detroit. Cunningham and Josaitis co-founded Focus: HOPE in the wake of the Motor City’s rioting during which 43 persons were killed.

Cunningham and Josaitis exposed systemic racial inequality in Motown. Both were fearless and fierce fighters for the city even matching Muhammad Ali in a charity boxing bout with the iconic and charismatic priest who rode a Harley-Davidson and taught seminary English. Cunningham marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

This carefully nuanced book is filled with detail about the rapport Focus: HOPE came to have with metropolitan Detroit residents. The author presents evidence that it was not always an easy path that Cunningham and Josaitis followed. ’Hate’ letters to the dynamic duo had Josaitis claiming to have ’outclassed’ her colleagues. In fact, Josaitis took to the helm at Focus: HOPE when Cunningham died in 1997. Josaitis died five years ago after years of battling ovarian and uterine cancer coupled with severe back problems. She challenged me as she did Mr. Kresnak to write this book. “What are you going to do for Focus: HOPE,” my friend and mentor asked me while at life’s end in Angela Hospice in Livonia, Michigan.

In 32 chapters and over 400 pages, the book tells a riveting tale about Cunningham, a guy with guts, a polished and current-affairs preacher, a lobbyist, miracle worker, pacifist, and, a mover and a shaker who rallied for racial reconciliation. Forbes Magazine dubbed Josaitis the “Mother Teresa of Detroit.” Even when she became CEO, Eli, as she was called, would carry food commodities to seniors — to the chagrin and dismay of Focus: HOPE board members. With wide and infectious smiles and the grip of a handshake Cunningham and Josaitis pressed a copper penny into the palms of the people they met to save the city.

“Remember in whom we trust,” they’d say.

Their tireless efforts bridged the racial divide.

Long days and nights away from her husband and family created conflict that sometimes caused Eleanor’s children, who wanted to be with her more often, to feel anger and resentment. In fact, “Eli thinking” was a repeated phrase that eulogized her in a full house at her funeral in the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament.

This highly recommended book depicts two citizens who lived their lives on the edge of controversy as they got things done.

After diving into its pages, the reader soon realizes that dreams were fulfilled in enterprises such as Focus: HOPE’s annual treks through dirty neighborhoods and countless boarded-up buildings, many that looked war-torn and tired from crime, guns, abandonment and years of neglect amid parcels of land filled with only weeds and waste.

The heroic pair brought justice to the city, with Eleanor providing balance to Bill, who enjoyed his meditation and jogs at Belle Isle Park.

Martin Luther King, Jr. reminds that the march to Selma continues. The journey calls for “drum majors for justice” until “all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics” learn to be together.

“That dream continues to inspire. I am happy that America continues to be, for many, a land of ’dreams,’” Pope Francis said to the U.S. Congress in his September visit. “Dreams which awaken what is deepest and truest in the life of a people,” the pope concluded.

The dream beats on in Detroit and elsewhere with King, Josaitis and Cunningham recalled.

• Lawrence Ventline, a longtime religion writer for the Detroit News, is a pastor, a board certified professional counselor and a former first executive director of the ecumenical Michigan Coalition for Human Rights.