Laura
06-14-2007, 08:35 AM
Sister is on a mission of Mercy (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/col/richardson/)
by Clem Richardson
Wednesday, June 13th 2007, 11:38 AM
Sister Catherine Crumlish remembers her parents' amazement when at 18, she announced she planned to join the Sisters of Mercy Convent.
"My mother would say I wasn't holy enough," Crumlish said between peals of laughter. "She couldn't understand. She used to drag me to church. I didn't want to go to novenas or any of that stuff.
"Sometimes I would tell her I was in church and I wasn't."
But there was something about the nuns and the order Crumlish could not shake.
"I fought it for a long time," Crumlish said. "I didn't really want to do it at times, but here I landed and stayed. A lot of my friends who came in with me didn't stay. They're wives and mothers now - I'm godmother!"
As executive director of the Mercy Home for Children, Crumlish has helped raise - and continues to raise - more than a few New Yorkers. Some of the men and women who take part in Mercy programs have been there more than 30 years.
Mercy Home for Children began 145 years ago, in 1862, as Mercy Home, created when five boys orphaned by a fire knocked on the doors of the Sisters of Mercy Convent on Brooklyn's Willoughby Ave. and asked to be taken in.
The group has had several incarnations over the last century; an orphanage that took in children who lost parents in the Civil War, then a foster care agency during the Great Depression and beyond.
Today, Mercy runs 11 homes for the developmentally disabled, many of them autistic children and adults. These facilities, scattered throughout Brooklyn and Queens, offer a range of services for the disabled and their families, including a weekend "respite" program that gives family caregivers a much-needed break from caring for relatives.
Last week, 200 present and former Mercy residents and workers gathered at the Sisters of Mercy Convent on Willoughby Ave. to mark the 145th anniversary.
"It was a beautiful celebration," said Sister Caroline Tweedy, Mercy Home's associate director of communications and development. "People we had not seen for years came back."
Crumlish, 66, has been Mercy's executive director since 1980. She was born and raised in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, ("In my day it only had one name, Flatbush," she said.) The daughter of Irish immigrants, Catherine and Henry, she has two sisters, Anne and Eileen.
A product of the city's parochial school system, Crumlish got her bachelor's degree in mathematics from St. Francis College in 1972 and her master's in administration from Hunter College two years later.
Crumlish said she had long admired the work nuns performed, and particularly the Sisters of Mercy.
"It was the personality of the sisters. ...They just seemed like they were loving, caring people. They also seemed to have fun, which I felt was very important."
As much fun as the nun who, after Crumlish and her eighth-grade classmates had fled the room an hour early, realized they had been aided in their early escape by someone who set the clock ahead an hour.
"We thought we were home free," Crumlish said. The next day, though, the nun kept teaching even after the dismissal bell sounded. "She said, 'Oh, you thought I missed out? Well, I want to catch up with you, and I know you want to learn.'
"She kept us after [for] an hour."
Crumlish was a math teacher for 20 years, working mostly at Holy Rosary School in Bedford-Stuyvesant, the neighborhood that is home to the Sisters of Mercy Convent. When the Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens consolidated several schools in the mid-1970s, she and other Sisters of Mercy joined with local parents to create the Dwayne Braithwaite School, named for a child who died as his parents were taking part in the school organization effort. Crumlish taught there for six years, and the school lasted for 10.
She left Braithwaite to go to Mercy Home.
The group now houses 103 people - ranging in age from 3 to 75 - in its full-time residences, and employs 150 people.
The private residences have 24-hour staffing and alarms on doors to make sure no charges can wander off, something Crumlish said people with autism are known to do.
Home residents get a variety of services, from cooking and computer classes to monthly dances, skating and swimming sessions and bingo nights.
The staff offers a variety of programs for its charges and their families, including Medicaid Services counseling to make sure families receive the benefits they are entitled to. There is adult day care, called Day Habilitation - programs that provide a break for people caring for their disabled family members at home, and a family support network where caregivers can meet people just like them who are dealing with the same issues.
The Creative Arts Center helps parents understand how to use art and music to help their children learn. Thanks to a grant from the Mitsui USA Foundation, Mercy Home now has its own band, the Mercy Home Performance Band, which holds concerts at local nursing homes and retirement homes.
Highly supervised resident groups take trips throughout the city, to museums and other institutions but also enjoy what to many of us are routine tasks. Crumlish said one group was eagerly awaiting a trip to a Laundromat.
It's those little triumphs that mean so much, Crumlish said.
She recalled an employee who was matched with a young autistic resident who did not speak. Crumlish would hear the man count off each step as he and his charge walked up the stairs past her office each day.
One day, the man had a sore throat. After the second step, a tiny voice rang out, saying, "Two, three ... " all the way up the stairs. Another win.
To learn more about Mercy Home, go to its Web site: www.mercyhomeny.org.
by Clem Richardson
Wednesday, June 13th 2007, 11:38 AM
Sister Catherine Crumlish remembers her parents' amazement when at 18, she announced she planned to join the Sisters of Mercy Convent.
"My mother would say I wasn't holy enough," Crumlish said between peals of laughter. "She couldn't understand. She used to drag me to church. I didn't want to go to novenas or any of that stuff.
"Sometimes I would tell her I was in church and I wasn't."
But there was something about the nuns and the order Crumlish could not shake.
"I fought it for a long time," Crumlish said. "I didn't really want to do it at times, but here I landed and stayed. A lot of my friends who came in with me didn't stay. They're wives and mothers now - I'm godmother!"
As executive director of the Mercy Home for Children, Crumlish has helped raise - and continues to raise - more than a few New Yorkers. Some of the men and women who take part in Mercy programs have been there more than 30 years.
Mercy Home for Children began 145 years ago, in 1862, as Mercy Home, created when five boys orphaned by a fire knocked on the doors of the Sisters of Mercy Convent on Brooklyn's Willoughby Ave. and asked to be taken in.
The group has had several incarnations over the last century; an orphanage that took in children who lost parents in the Civil War, then a foster care agency during the Great Depression and beyond.
Today, Mercy runs 11 homes for the developmentally disabled, many of them autistic children and adults. These facilities, scattered throughout Brooklyn and Queens, offer a range of services for the disabled and their families, including a weekend "respite" program that gives family caregivers a much-needed break from caring for relatives.
Last week, 200 present and former Mercy residents and workers gathered at the Sisters of Mercy Convent on Willoughby Ave. to mark the 145th anniversary.
"It was a beautiful celebration," said Sister Caroline Tweedy, Mercy Home's associate director of communications and development. "People we had not seen for years came back."
Crumlish, 66, has been Mercy's executive director since 1980. She was born and raised in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, ("In my day it only had one name, Flatbush," she said.) The daughter of Irish immigrants, Catherine and Henry, she has two sisters, Anne and Eileen.
A product of the city's parochial school system, Crumlish got her bachelor's degree in mathematics from St. Francis College in 1972 and her master's in administration from Hunter College two years later.
Crumlish said she had long admired the work nuns performed, and particularly the Sisters of Mercy.
"It was the personality of the sisters. ...They just seemed like they were loving, caring people. They also seemed to have fun, which I felt was very important."
As much fun as the nun who, after Crumlish and her eighth-grade classmates had fled the room an hour early, realized they had been aided in their early escape by someone who set the clock ahead an hour.
"We thought we were home free," Crumlish said. The next day, though, the nun kept teaching even after the dismissal bell sounded. "She said, 'Oh, you thought I missed out? Well, I want to catch up with you, and I know you want to learn.'
"She kept us after [for] an hour."
Crumlish was a math teacher for 20 years, working mostly at Holy Rosary School in Bedford-Stuyvesant, the neighborhood that is home to the Sisters of Mercy Convent. When the Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens consolidated several schools in the mid-1970s, she and other Sisters of Mercy joined with local parents to create the Dwayne Braithwaite School, named for a child who died as his parents were taking part in the school organization effort. Crumlish taught there for six years, and the school lasted for 10.
She left Braithwaite to go to Mercy Home.
The group now houses 103 people - ranging in age from 3 to 75 - in its full-time residences, and employs 150 people.
The private residences have 24-hour staffing and alarms on doors to make sure no charges can wander off, something Crumlish said people with autism are known to do.
Home residents get a variety of services, from cooking and computer classes to monthly dances, skating and swimming sessions and bingo nights.
The staff offers a variety of programs for its charges and their families, including Medicaid Services counseling to make sure families receive the benefits they are entitled to. There is adult day care, called Day Habilitation - programs that provide a break for people caring for their disabled family members at home, and a family support network where caregivers can meet people just like them who are dealing with the same issues.
The Creative Arts Center helps parents understand how to use art and music to help their children learn. Thanks to a grant from the Mitsui USA Foundation, Mercy Home now has its own band, the Mercy Home Performance Band, which holds concerts at local nursing homes and retirement homes.
Highly supervised resident groups take trips throughout the city, to museums and other institutions but also enjoy what to many of us are routine tasks. Crumlish said one group was eagerly awaiting a trip to a Laundromat.
It's those little triumphs that mean so much, Crumlish said.
She recalled an employee who was matched with a young autistic resident who did not speak. Crumlish would hear the man count off each step as he and his charge walked up the stairs past her office each day.
One day, the man had a sore throat. After the second step, a tiny voice rang out, saying, "Two, three ... " all the way up the stairs. Another win.
To learn more about Mercy Home, go to its Web site: www.mercyhomeny.org.