PAT Mccormick

PAT McCORMICK. Born 1935. Transcript of OH 1454V This interview was recorded on January 13, 2007, for the Maria Rogers Oral History Program and the Rocky Flats Cold War Museum. The interviewer is Dorothy Ciarlo. The interview is also available in video format, filmed by Dorothy Ciarlo. The interview was transcribed by Sandy Adler. NOTE: Interviewer’s questions and comments appear in parentheses. Added material appears in brackets. ABSTRACT: Pat McCormick, a Sister of Loretto, describes the development of her political values through her early work in Latin America and tells about her twelve years of weekly prayer vigils and other actions of civil resistance with regard to the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant. She describes in detail a protest action in which she and another nun drove through the Rocky Flats gate and, while in a restricted area, poured human blood on crosses that had photos of the world’s poor on them, resulting in her arrest and imprisonment for two months [A]. 00:00 (This is an oral history with Pat McCormick. Today’s date is January 13th, 2007. We’re meeting at the Garden of St. Elizabeth’s, is that the correct way to say it?) Gardens at St. Elizabeth’s. (Gardens at St. Elizabeth’s, which is where Pat works. We’re doing this oral history for the Rocky Flats Cold War Museum and the Maria Rogers Oral History Program of the Carnegie Library. My name is Dorothy Ciarlo. Thank you so much, Pat.) You’re welcome. Thank you that we could do this. (Yes.) Good. (The first question, as I promised, is, when and where were you born?) I was born in Harmon, Illinois, which is northwest of Chicago, born on a farm in October 1935. I am the third-oldest of 11 children, and so went to public grade school and then a Catholic high school, and that’s where I met the Sisters of Loretto, the Catholic community that I belong to, so I’m a Sister of Loretto, and we also have co-members in our community of different denominations. (Just going back a little bit, did you know from early on that you wanted to join the—?) Well, I think I probably was attracted to the women and the way the women were and the way they cared about their students and cared about education for their students. And I was especially impressed by how personal they were, caring about my family. Also, we are an American order, North American, founded in North American in 1812, and so there was something very natural and attractive about the way the women lived their lives and what they taught us. Probably my first education regarding racism was from those sisters. I remember at times being in conflict with my father about the black issue, African American, because his experience was certainly one of segregation. He didn’t have the opportunity to know any African Americans. I can remember that conflict with my father. (What were your parents like? They were farmers?) Yes, they were farmers. We had a very, I think, happy childhood. So many of us in one place, we always had playmates. And they were—as I look back on it, my mother and father really gave each of us a lot of confidence, with discipline; respected choices that we made; and even if it was a hardship for them, with career decisions that we would make, they would encourage us to do that. My father was more liberal than my mother, and with time, my mother became a co- member in our community, and then, because of the influence of my friends— My father died quite early. He was only 66. And Mom had about 20 years of being a widow. But she didn’t sit home, she then did a lot of traveling, came and visited with me for about 20 years before she could no longer travel. And during that time became very familiar with the things that we in our community care about, which is social justice, peace, social justice. A lot of people issues. The way my parents raised us fit in quite well with what I saw in the lives of the sisters. 04:28 (How did you happen to—was it just kind of accident that you happened to go to a school run by these sisters?) No. My mother had gone to that school herself. (What was the name of the school?) It was then Community High School in Sterling, Illinois. And my mom’s mom and dad sacrificed for her to go to that school. So then when it came time—we could not afford for all of us—we had to go by bus, because we were in a farming community, so they could only afford to send us to the high school. In fact, my brothers and sisters were just talking about being in a country school where three of us were in the same room, first, second, and third grade. The next set were fourth, fifth, and sixth, then seventh and eighth, and then there was the high school. By the time we got to the high school, our parents then decided to send us to a Catholic school. But it was with great sacrifice. My mother—at that time the priests used to pay people to sing at these masses, and my mother used to leave home—my sister and I were responsible for getting everyone else ready for school—and she would go to these parishes, and that’s how they paid for the bus tuition. And so we always knew that my mother and father made great sacrifices for us to have that education. And then my oldest brother went to a Catholic college, and another brother went to a Catholic high school away—didn’t go to—it’s now called Newman High School, but at that time it was Community High School. But my mother had the history with the sisters. (At what point did you go—from high school, did you join the community immediately?) Yes. I graduated in May of 1953, and I entered the community in September. So then I went to Kentucky and studied there and then we were sent to St. Louis, to Webster University, where we got our degree before we went out to teach. And then I went to Fort Collins to teach. I taught both grade school and middle school there. Then I was asked if I wanted to be—I was about 29 years old—and I was asked if I wanted to be the superior—at that time we still called them superiors—the superior of the community in Fort Collins at St. Joseph Catholic School, or did I want to go to Latin America, to Bolivia. And I said I wanted to go to Bolivia. So I was trained—I went in 1965, studied Spanish at Loretto Heights College here in Denver, then went to Cuernavaca, Mexico, and studied there for four months. There were 72 of us from every country in the world. (And were they all of the same religious order, or different?) Oh, different. Men and women, lay people. It was run by Monsignor Ivan Illich, who was quite a— (Can you spell that?) I-v-a-n I-l-l-i-c-h. He had an intercultural center, and it was there—it was also during the time— I remember while I was there two—three—very important things happened. Pope Paul VI came to the United Nations, and it was at that time that he said, “Never again war. War never again.” So that was 1965. And at that same time, Daniel Berrigan, the Jesuit [well-known Jesuit peace activist] and his brother, but Dan especially at that time—he lived in New York, and Cardinal Spellman, the Catholic Cardinal of the New York diocese, banned Dan because he was opposing the Vietnam war. He got the Jesuits to exile Dan. And while I was in Cuernavaca studying, Dan Berrigan came there, and I talked with him. Ivan Illich very much wanted Dan to speak with everyone about why he was exiled, and he refused to do that, because, he said, it would only make matters worse. So then what Dan did was, he toured all of Latin America, which was the worst thing they could have done, because then he became more and more—we say concientisaba about the poverty of the world and also U.S. policies at that time. Because Illich was teaching us all about how the United States was really exploiting—what imperialism was doing to the rest of the world, and most especially to Latin America. And so Vatican II was going on. We in our community, we had Mary Luke Tobin, who was the Mother General at that time— 10:04 (And who has gone on to become very active as well.) Yes. And she died recently, at age 93. So we had that kind of change that was taking place in our lives in religious life. We religious women and men were being told that we really are for the world, we are there to serve the world, and not to internalize and only take care of ourselves. The Vietnam war was going on, and we were learning about Latin America. And so I went then to Peru for about nine months, taught in a boys’ school there, and became more adept in the language, and then went to—was asked to be the coordinator, not the superior, but the coordinator, in La Paz, Bolivia.

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