Archive for March 31st, 2010
A Flexible, 9-Ft. Whale Tooth with Super-Sensing Power?
By Pamela Ferdinand | December 13, 2005 for National Geographic News
| For centuries observers have been fascinated and mystified by the majestic spiral tusk grown by the small Arctic whale known as the narwhal. The extraordinary tooth—extending up to 9 feet (2.7 meters) and textured like a seashell—long evoked the horn of the mythical unicorn and was once sought by royalty as a magical antidote to poison. Science shed little light on the narwhal tusk, however, and its purpose remained elusive. That is until now. Martin Nweeia, a Connecticut-based dentist, is expected today to announce two key discoveries that reveal the tusk’s unique structure and provide significant clues to its function. The findings may further explain whale species behavior and recast thinking on other mammalian teeth. Using cutting-edge technology, Nweeia and his colleagues learned that the narwhal’s oversize tooth possesses a rare combination of extraordinary strength and extreme flexibility. It turns out that an 8-foot (2.4-meter) tusk, seemingly rigid, can bend 1 foot (30 centimeters) in any direction. The team also found compelling evidence that the tusk may be a hydrodynamic sensory organ that contains an extensive nerve system and gathers valuable information for survival in Arctic waters. Researchers say the tusk’s nerve system could detect temperature, pressure, motion, and chemical-solution gradients, such as differences in salinity and water particles that would indicate the presence of certain fish prey. Tactile Tooth The tusk also may possess tactile abilities, perhaps allowing narwhals to identify and communicate with one another through tapping. “There isn’t any other tooth like this, not even remotely close,” said Nweeia, the research team’s principal investigator and a Harvard School of Dental Medicine clinical instructor. The Connecticut-based dentist is scheduled to announce the findings today at the 16th Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals in San Diego. Nweeia, whose latest research was sponsored in part by the National Geographic Society’s Expeditions Council, has studied narwhals on four trips to the Canadian high Arctic. He founded the Narwhal Tooth Expeditions and Research Investigation in 2000, bringing together both scientific experts from a variety of disciplines and members of the region’s indigenous Inuit population. The new findings, which have not been published, are based on analyses of at least six Canadian male narwhal tusks, Nweeia said. One of a Kind The narwhal, whose Latin name Monodon Monoceros translates as “one tooth, one horn,” typically grows 13 to 15 feet (4 to 4.5 meters) long, not counting its tusk, and weighs about 2,200 to 3,500 pounds (1,000 to 1,600 kilograms). A protected Arctic species, narwhals are social animals that mostly live in the Atlantic portion of the Arctic Ocean and are found in fewer numbers in the Greenland Sea. They are hunted by the Inuit for their tusks, meat, and skin. The whales have been known to dive nearly vertically as deep as 3,000 feet (about 900 meters) multiple times per day. (They dive when scared and presumably to feed.) The mammal’s tusk has baffled scientists because it defies known principles and properties of teeth. It is slightly longer than half the animal’s length and typically protrudes through the left side of a male’s upper jaw plate and lip. (For comparison, consider a six-foot-tall [two-meter-tall] person with a three-foot-tall [meter-long] incisor jutting straight up into the air.) Furthermore, unlike the curved teeth of elephants and warthogs, the narwhal tooth is nature’s only straight tusk. It consistently spirals on a left-handed, single axis. Scientists speculate the spiral may minimize tusk fractures, and prior research suggests it may aid the tusk’s relatively straight growth during development. Adding to the tusk’s uniqueness is its odd gender distribution. The teeth are common in males but not females. Female tusks, when they do appear, tend to be shorter and cleaner with more tightly wound spiral patterns. Inside Out The latest findings, researchers say, only add to the narwhal’s singularity. Generally, mammalian teeth are softer on the inside and tougher on the outside to resist wear and abrasion. But when Naomi Eidelman, an infrared microscopy expert at the Paffenbarger Research Center at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland, used a special technique to map cross-sections of a tusk cell by cell, she reported something dramatically different. While the tusk contains some materials similar to other mammalian teeth—dentin, pulp, and cementum—it is constructed “inside out,” said Frederick Eichmiller, who directs the research center. A highly mineralized layer surrounds the pulp on the inside, like a steel rod. The outside of the tooth, which resembles enamel at the tip, is actually less mineral and more protein. Cementum is usually the layer that bonds the tooth to the bone in other mammalian teeth. But in this case, the cementum is “just sticking out into the ocean,” Eichmiller said. “This tooth was different from what we’ve seen before,” he said. “Ever.” Scientists theorize the reverse architecture endows the tusk with flexibility, possibly helping it to absorb shock and resist extreme water pressures during deep dives. The tusk does not appear able to lay down another form of dentin to heal cracks, and perhaps it does not need to, Nweeia says. The researcher adds that the tusk’s unusual qualities could have profound implications for modern dentistry and biomaterials science. “Everything about this tusk is built not to break,” he said. “To find a material that is flexible and strong—that is kind of the grail for restorative materials. This guy’s got it.” Sensing the Environment The new findings also provide significant clues to tusk function, a puzzle that has generated conflicting theories, from displaying aggression to breaking ice. Using scanning electron microscopy, researchers uncovered evidence of dentinal tubules, basic structures that exist in almost all teeth, including humans. The tubules are remnants of a cell process in which millions of tiny nerve connections tunnel their way from the central nerve of a tooth to its outer surface. Tubules in human mouths are sensitive to cold and are normally covered by enamel. We experience discomfort and pain only when they are inadvertently exposed, through cavities, for example. Narwhal tubules, however, penetrate the outermost layer of the tooth, directly exposing sensory connections to the Arctic environment. The result is that the tusk—despite its inanimate appearance—actually serves as a kind of membrane with an extremely sensitive surface, researchers say. Tubules are known to allow for specific sensory functions in mammals, such as gauging air temperature and barometric pressure. But it remains to be seen what they are used for by the narwhal, whose tubules contain a solution similar to blood plasma, Nweeia says. Sensing salinity is one possible answer; Nweeia and his colleagues have developed customized equipment to test this theory that measures narwhal brain activity when saline solution is introduced to the tusk. Narwhal migration is tied to ice formation, which affects saline concentrations, and narwhals may be able to detect subtle changes in the environment from miles away, Nweeia said. Human teeth have evolved so that “we go out of our way not to have cold things against a tubule,” he said. “Why does an Arctic whale, who is in frigid waters and incredible pressures all of his life, go out of his way to have open tubules?” “If you are going to develop something like this, from an evolutionary standpoint it has to be about survival. There are a lot better ways to get a female than growing one of these,” he added. Solving the Puzzle Future field expeditions are expected to focus on anatomical studies and sensory research. Scientists at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, are conducting CT and MRI scans on two narwhal heads, one male and one female. And a dissection team, led by James Mead of the Smithsonian Institution, will convene in January. Still unanswered, researchers say, are fundamental questions about how and why the tusk evolved. “There’s a difference, but why is there a difference?” Eichmiller said. “That’s the part that is the most intriguing.” |
‘We Commit Their Elements’; Ashes of JFK Jr., Bessettes Scattered Near Crash Site; Kennedy, Bessettes Given Shipboard Rites
By Barton Gellman and Pamela Ferdinand | July 23, 1999 for The Washington Post
MARTHA’S VINEYARD, Mass.–In an ancient naval ritual adapted to private grief, the Kennedys and Bessettes entombed three loved ones today in the plot of sea that swallowed their fallen aircraft six nights ago.
From the fantail of the destroyer USS Briscoe, anchored between Martha’s Vineyard and the Kennedy clan’s redoubt at Hyannis Port, an officer in dress whites carried three brass urns of ashes, one by one, down a ladder to the wind-chopped water line. There on a small steel platform, their next of kin scattered the ashes of John F. Kennedy Jr.; his wife, Carolyn Bessette; and her sister Lauren Bessette into the waves.
“We commit their elements to the deep, for we are dust and unto dust we shall return, but the Lord Jesus Christ will change our mortal bodies to be like his in glory, for He is risen the first-born from the dead,” a Navy chaplain prayed, one of five clergymen who took part in the shipboard service. “So let us commend our brother and sisters to the Lord, that the Lord may embrace them in peace and raise them up on the last day.”
No honor guard fired a three-volley salute, and no bugler played “Taps,” as Navy procedure would dictate in a military funeral. The Navy’s permission for burial at sea, granted after Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) requested it Tuesday from Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, came under a provision entitling nonveterans who have made notable or outstanding contributions to the United States.
“Clearly we felt that John Kennedy Jr.’s contributions were both notable and outstanding,” said Rear Adm. Tom Jurkowsky, the Navy’s chief spokesman. “He’s obviously spent much of his life working for the disabled and underprivileged. He headed up a nonprofit group providing opportunities for people with disabilities. And he was the son of a former president of the United States, who himself was a World War II hero.”
The choice of venue arose in part from the dead trio’s long delight in the local waters, which link the mainland to the private beach property that Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis left her son at Martha’s Vineyard’s Squibnocket Pond. The two families asked that the Briscoe, officials said, steam as close as possible to the spot from which the three bodies and some of the wreckage were pulled Wednesday afternoon.
Perhaps the larger motivation, associates said, was practical. Burial at sea, behind a Navy and Coast Guard picket that kept aircraft and chartered tugs at some remove, afforded what privacy the famous can find in the age of the satellite and telephoto lens.
Only 17 relatives — including Sen. Kennedy, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, Richard and Ann Freeman and Lisa Bessette — put aboard the Briscoe at 9:00 this morning, along with a priest identified by the Cape Cod Times as the Rev. Charles J. O’Byrne, who married John Kennedy and Carolyn Bessette. Network cameras tracked the 9,200-ton destroyer from port at Woods Hole and then from the island coast where parts of Kennedy’s shattered airplane had washed ashore. All they could see, for hours, was a warship’s stately procession toward the horizon.
NBC’s broadcast overlaid that image with the eerily evocative voice of the dead man’s slain father, recorded as then-President Kennedy toasted the America’s Cup racing crews on Sept. 14, 1962: “It is an interesting biological fact that all of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea — whether it is to sail or to watch it — we are going back from whence we came.”
In New York, with another invitation-only service set for Friday, the city’s Irish Catholic community held a public mass this evening for the three. Thousands of mourners gathered for Irish hymns and eulogies at St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral in lower Manhattan.
President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton announced plans to attend the private Friday memorial at the St. Thomas More Roman Catholic Church. They invited Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and her husband to accompany them there aboard Air Force One.
Preliminary autopsy results, summarized for reporters, found the three travelers died instantly of multiple trauma when their Piper Saratoga struck the water after descending at a rate of more than 5,000 feet per minute. That rate, combined with the plane’s forward speed, would make the ocean as unyielding as concrete.
Divers said the single-engine craft sprawled in pieces on the seabed, 116 feet down, its engine and wings sheared off and passenger compartment broken apart.
Sources close to the investigation said investigators found no apparent defects in their initial examination of the fuselage, the engine and the propellers in a closed hangar at Otis Air National Guard Base. But they cautioned that weeks of detail work lie ahead before they can rule out structural or mechanical causes.
The sources said most, if not all, of the aircraft appears to have been located in the debris field where the fuselage and the bodies were found still strapped in their seats. That includes the wings, the tail section, the engine and the propeller. One of the three metal prop blades was broken off but was near the rest of the prop, indicating it broke on impact with the water or the ocean floor and not in flight.
A number of cockpit navigational instruments were recovered, and may provide valuable clues, the sources said.
If no mechanical or structural defects are found, investigators will be left with the likelihood that Kennedy lost his bearings, and then control of the plane, while flying over a dark ocean in thick haze. Hundreds of pilots have died in similar conditions, without visual cues to up and down.
Dozens of local residents and tourists in shorts and T-shirts lined the narrow streets and bridges of Woods Hole to catch a glimpse of the motorcade as it pulled into the harbor on a windy and overcast day. Like the Kennedys, who have not shed public tears, the people gathered here to remember, not to weep.
Jim Merageas, 62, said this was the first time in days he had managed to pull himself away from the drama unfolding on his television set in a nearby vacation home.
“What did they do to deserve this. . . . I don’t think any of us will come up with an answer,” Merageas said from his perch along the two-lane road crowded with news crews overlooking the harbor. “When we got up this morning and they said what was going on, I said, ‘Hey, let’s see it. We can get down there and really see it for ourselves.’ ”
Family members seen embarking the Coast Guard cutter Sanibel included Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg and her husband, Edwin, holding hands; Sen. Kennedy and his two sons; Maria Shriver; and William Kennedy Smith. They were joined by Lisa Ann Bessette, Lauren’s twin sister; her mother, Ann Freeman; and stepfather Richard Freeman. All were dressed in black. The senator waved to a pair of onlookers as if to either acknowledge their presence or kindly shoo them away, but family members otherwise maintained their silence as state police officers guarded the entrance to the dock and buoys clanged in the distance.
Family members’ main concern is keeping the youngest children out of the loop of sadness, and any discussions of the tragedy are usually reserved for after the children have gone to bed, a source close to the family said. “You wouldn’t believe how quiet it is in the compound, except for the children,” the source said. “The tears they shed, they shed alone.”
Four Navy chaplains and Father O’Byrne — all Roman Catholic — presided over a mariners’ service. It lasted 35 minutes.
While cremation and burial at sea are not the usual Catholic funeral practices, the church lifted its absolute ban in 1963. Cremation was once thought by the church to deny Catholic belief in the resurrection of the body on Judgment Day. The church expects cremated remains to be treated much like a whole body, and frowns on the scattering of ashes.
The family chose to do so anyway. As they did a brass quintet from the Newport Naval Base played Christian hymns, in place of the military “Taps.” There were no words, but one participant said the words were well known to the two families of observant Catholics. “Abide with me,” went one of the hymns, “fast falls the eventide, the darkness deepens, Lord with me abide. When other helpers fail and comfort flee, help of the helpless, o abide with me.”
Ferdinand reported from Martha’s Vineyard. Staff writers Don Phillips, Hanna Rosin and Bradley Graham in Washington and researcher Nathan Abse contributed to this report.
After One Cardinal Resigns, Catholics Ask: Who’s Next?; Other Bishops Under Scrutiny for Handling Sex Abuse Cases
By Pamela Ferdinand and Alan Cooperman | December 23, 2002 for The Washington Post
MANCHESTER, N.H.–Within hours of Cardinal Bernard F. Law’s resignation on Dec. 13, an alleged victim of a pedophile priest stepped to the podium at a news conference in Boston and announced a new target.
“Bishop McCormack, we’re coming after you,” said Gary Bergeron, 40, referring to New Hampshire Bishop John B. McCormack, who was not present. “For every document I’ve seen with the name Bernard Law, I’ve seen 100 with the name Bishop McCormack.”
Law is the 19th bishop worldwide, and the ninth in the United States, to step down since 1990 in the wake of sex abuse scandals. To many Roman Catholics, a natural question is: Who’s next?
Law’s resignation creates a “massive precedent” that has emboldened sexual abuse victims, their supporters, prosecutors and even priests to push for more resignations, said Philip Jenkins, a professor of religious studies at Penn State University who has written two books about the scandal.
“I think we’re going to see rising tension between the higher and lower clergy as more and more ordinary priests organize, not just in self-defense, but to challenge their bishops,” Jenkins said.
Pressure is mounting quickly on five of Law’s former deputies who have received subpoenas to testify before a Massachusetts grand jury. Chief among them is McCormack, 67, who handled sexual misconduct cases in the Boston archdiocese for a decade before being promoted to bishop of Manchester in 1998. On Dec. 10, he signed an agreement acknowledging that New Hampshire’s attorney general had sufficient evidence to convict his diocese of child endangerment.
But attention also is shifting to the powerful cardinals of Los Angeles and New York and to bishops in other cities, such as Phoenix and Toledo, who are up against aggressive prosecutors, hard-hitting local newspapers and restive clergy.
Some victim activists have misgivings about demanding the resignations of particular bishops. David Clohessy, executive director of the largest victims’ group, the 4,300-member Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said it is “a dangerous strategy” that “could delude people into thinking the problem is a few bad apples.”
Nonetheless, many victims in communities across the country have called on their local bishops to step down. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll, taken Dec. 12-15, also shows rising public dissatisfaction with the hierarchy’s response to the scandal, even among Catholics.
More than three-quarters of the 1,209 adults in the nationwide poll, and 69 percent of the Catholics, said they disapproved of the church’s handling of sexual abuse. Half of all the respondents — and more than a third of the Catholics — said the church “cannot be trusted” to handle the issue properly in the future.
Among the prelates under rising financial and legal pressure is Los Angeles’ Cardinal Roger Mahony, who faces an onslaught of civil lawsuits in 2003 because the California legislature has lifted the statute of limitations for one year.
Having spent nearly $ 200 million on a new cathedral, Mahony’s archdiocese now faces budget cuts. A grand jury has subpoenaed its records on 17 priests, and Mahony has been personally implicated in the case of the Rev. Michael Baker, who says he admitted to the archbishop in 1986 that he had molested several boys. Baker was sent for psychological treatment and then transferred to nine different parishes before leaving the priesthood two years ago.
Cardinal Edward Egan of New York also is under intense scrutiny for his past handling of abuse allegations. When he was bishop of Bridgeport, Conn., for example, Egan allegedly gave an accused priest $ 17,000 to settle bank debts and hire an attorney, the Hartford Courant has reported.
Prelates in smaller dioceses who are under pressure to step down include Bishop Thomas J. O’Brien of Phoenix. He faces a grand jury investigation by a prosecutor who has suggested that the bishop’s resignation might help to avert criminal charges against church leaders.
And in the diocese of Toledo, two priests have called for Bishop James R. Hoffman to step down, particularly in light of eight lawsuits accusing the Rev. Dennis Gray of molesting numerous boys before leaving the priesthood in 1987. Although victims say they told church officials about the abuse before 1987, Gray left the priesthood with a clean record and went on to work in the Toledo public schools until this year.
One of the priests urging Hoffman to retire, the Rev. Patrick Rohen, said he is “breaking the code of silence.”
“I will tell you, I fear retaliation,” Rohen said. “But somebody’s got to speak out on this. The whole problem is the world of secrecy and shame. In order to get beyond this denial, in places where cover-ups and incompetence have been demonstrated, those bishops should retire.”
The combination of events that preceded Law’s resignation — including a subpoena for the cardinal to testify before a grand jury, the threat of bankruptcy for the archdiocese and a letter from 58 priests calling for his departure — has not been duplicated elsewhere.
But some victim activists believe the main determinant of future resignations will be whether jurists across the county follow the example of Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Constance M. Sweeney, who granted the Boston Globe’s request for the release of internal church documents on sexual misconduct.
“If in other states, the files are turned over the way they were in Boston, then yeah, there will be a domino effect,” said Mary Grant, head of the Los Angeles chapter of SNAP.
McCormack is on the hot seat partly because his name appears frequently in the Boston files. He served as Law’s secretary for ministerial personnel from 1984 to 1994 and is a defendant in many of the suits against the Boston archdiocese. But he has also run into trouble in Manchester, a diocese that includes all of New Hampshire’s 325,000 Catholics.
As recently as June, McCormack reassigned a priest to a parish even though the priest admitted having sex with a teenage boy in the 1980s and the diocese was arranging a secret financial settlement.
When the settlement was revealed, McCormack bluntly explained that he had decided to keep the Rev. Ronald P. Cote in ministry because “it was not anticipated that this would be public.” Parishioners were outraged, newspapers editorialized for McCormack to resign and protesters who picketed against Law said they would begin demonstrating at St. Joseph Cathedral in Manchester.
“If you got 500 Catholics from all over the state in a room and put the question to them, I bet 400 would vote for new leadership,” said Peter Flood, New Hampshire coordinator for Voice of the Faithful, a lay Catholic group that has called for structural changes in the church.
It has been a deep and sudden spiral for McCormack, who until recently was a national leader in the church’s response to the scandals. He served as chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse for two years before stepping down in April, following the disclosure that he failed to investigate complaints against the Rev. Paul R. Shanley in Boston even after Shanley publicly advocated men having sex with boys. Shanley was recently released from jail pending his trial on molestation charges.
McCormack has said he has no plans to resign as bishop. But he alluded to the precariousness of his position in a homily last Sunday, saying, “My past haunts my present and clouds my future with you in New Hampshire.”
McCormack’s defenders say he has dealt compassionately with both victims and perpetrators. Peter E. Hutchins, an attorney who has brought 75 sexual abuse lawsuits against the church, said the Manchester diocese under McCormack has admitted liability, waived a statute of limitations, shared information about its assets and refrained from attacking victims’ truthfulness.
“We don’t know all that’s in the files in Boston, but if you judge him by what he’s done in New Hampshire, he’s been a wonderful leader,” said Donna Sytek, former speaker of the state House of Representatives and head of a diocesan task force on sexual misconduct. “I truly believe he gets it. He may not have gotten it 15 years ago, but he really is committed to change.”
Some victims see McCormack differently: as a bishop who repeatedly accepted the word of accused priests over the complaints of victims and their families.
Bergeron, who warned on the day of Law’s resignation that the New Hampshire bishop would be next, held a news conference Friday with four other men who say they were molested in various Massachusetts parishes by the late Rev. Joseph E. Birmingham.
The men provided reporters with copies of church files showing McCormack was aware of complaints that Birmingham sexually abused children. But Birmingham nevertheless was sent to St. Ann’s Parish in Gloucester in 1985 and promoted to pastor the following year.
In an April 1987 letter, McCormack reassured one parishioner who had heard Birmingham had molested boys in another parish and was worried he might pose a threat to her son, an altar boy. “I contacted Father Birmingham and asked him specifically about the matter you expressed in your letter. He assured me there is absolutely no factual basis to your concern regarding your son and him,” McCormack wrote. A spokesman said the bishop was not available for comment but confirmed that McCormack had agreed to meet with the men after Christmas.
Birmingham “was having a feast on young boys,” one of the alleged victims, Larry Sweeney, told reporters. “The caterers were McCormack and other bishops who knew about him and what he was doing.”
Cooperman reported from Washington.
Boston’s Cardinal Resigns Over Sex Abuse Scandal
By Alan Cooperman and Pamela Ferdinand | December 14, 2002 for The Washington Post
Nearly a year after the scandal over clergy sexual abuse erupted in his archdiocese, Boston’s Cardinal Bernard F. Law resigned yesterday, apologizing for his mistakes and saying he hoped his departure would usher in a period of healing.
Law tendered his resignation in a morning meeting with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican, and it was immediately accepted, the Vatican announced. Auxiliary Bishop Richard G. Lennon, a relative newcomer to Boston who is untainted by the scandal, was appointed as a temporary administrator until the pope chooses a new archbishop.
“It is my fervent prayer that this action may help the Archdiocese of Boston to experience the healing, reconciliation and unity which are so desperately needed,” Law said in a written statement. “To all those who have suffered from my shortcomings and mistakes, I both apologize and from them beg forgiveness.”
Law’s resignation came after steadily increasing evidence that he failed to remove sexually abusive priests, and with his archdiocese teetering on bankruptcy under the burden of hundreds of lawsuits by alleged victims.
There was no immediate word on what Law, 71, the most senior Roman Catholic prelate in the United States and the archbishop of Boston since 1984, will do next. But church experts said he would almost certainly remain a cardinal and could be named to a post at the Vatican. His statement said “the particular circumstances of this time suggest a quiet departure.”
Although several U.S. bishops have been forced to retire because of the sexual abuse scandal, Law is the first to resign because of his mishandling of the problem, without being personally implicated in sexual misconduct.
Law’s brief statement did not explain why he was stepping down now, after months of demands by sexual abuse victims for his resignation. He had offered to resign at least once before, in an April visit to the Vatican, but said afterward that the pope had encouraged him to stay on and that he wanted to be “part of the solution” to the scandal.
Since the beginning of December, however, Law’s remaining support among Boston’s 2 million Catholics crumbled as the archdiocese considered filing for bankruptcy, a judge ordered the release of 11,000 pages of church files on sexual misconduct by priests, and prosecutors sent Law a subpoena to appear before a grand jury in a widening criminal investigation of the archdiocese.
Perhaps the most damaging in this “series of final straws,” said the Rev. Robert Bullock, head of the 250-member Boston Priests Forum, was a letter from 58 Boston area priests calling for Law to resign. “The priests and people of Boston have lost confidence in you as their spiritual leader,” it said.
In a week of accelerating events, Law’s subpoena was delivered last Friday. On Saturday, he flew to Rome, canceling his weekend appearances in Boston without explanation.
The priests’ letter arrived at his empty residence Monday. Two days later, leaders of the 25,000-member lay group Voice of the Faithful, which previously had refrained from criticizing Law, voted overwhelmingly to urge for his resignation.
And on Thursday, Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas Reilly said at a news conference that although it is not yet clear whether prosecutors will be able to bring criminal charges against leaders of the Boston archdiocese, there is abundant evidence that those leaders engaged in a years-long coverup of sexual abuse by priests. “The church cared more about itself than it cared about kids,” said Reilly, a Catholic.
Donna Morrissey, a spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said yesterday that Law will meet all of his legal obligations, including the subpoena. Holding back tears, Morrissey told reporters that Law was “doing okay. He’s always been steadily concerned with what was in the best interests of the Archdiocese of Boston.”
Boston was in an uproar yesterday over Law’s resignation. Both of the city’s newspapers ran “Extras” and television stations were live with the story all morning. And although the cardinal’s critics — including many alleged victims — were pleased, a tone of subdued sadness permeated the city, one of the nation’s bastions of Catholicism where many residents identify themselves by parish rather than by neighborhood.
Law remains a defendant in the hundreds of civil lawsuits, but it will now be up to Lennon, the temporary administrator, to decide whether the Boston archdiocese should file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to try to force a global settlement of those suits.
Lennon, 55, has been rector of St. John’s Seminary in Brighton, Mass., since 1999 and was ordained a bishop last year. He said yesterday he would resign the seminary post and “do all I can with the help of the bishops, priests, deacons, religious and laity of the archdiocese, to work towards healing” the wounds left by the scandal.
James E. Post, president of Voice of the Faithful, noted that Lennon has met several times with abuse victims. “That gives us hope, because if you look at what lies ahead, there’s no quality more important to the healing process than the ability to listen and to have a genuine conversation with people of the archdiocese,” Post said.
As a relatively new bishop, however, Lennon does not appear to be in the running to become Boston’s next cardinal. Among the likely candidates for the post, according to church experts, are Bishop Wilton D. Gregory of Belleville, Ill., the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops; Archbishop Harry Flynn of St. Paul-Minneapolis, who heads the conference’s Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse; and Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien, head of the vicariate of the U.S. Military Services.
Although Vatican officials said Law raised the possibility of bankruptcy during his discussions in Rome this week, it is unclear whether the Vatican gave its approval.
Plaintiffs lawyers have said they believe the talk of Chapter 11 is a bluff intended to pressure victims into accepting smaller settlements and dissuade them from bringing further lawsuits.
Bankruptcy would open the archdiocese’s books, turn over control of its finances to a civil court, bring shame on the church and depart from the Vatican’s worldwide policy of financial independence from governments.
Law’s resignation could help avoid all that, said Patrick Schiltz, an associate dean of the University of St. Thomas Law School in Minneapolis who has represented many U.S. dioceses in sexual abuse lawsuits.
“I’ve negotiated hundreds of settlements in clergy misconduct cases, and unlike a typical commercial case, they are emotional events, not just financial events,” Schiltz said. “The victims in Boston just don’t trust Cardinal Law, and many of them have personalized their anger on Cardinal Law. Whether that’s right or wrong, it’s been an obstacle to settlement.”
Several plaintiffs’ lawyers said, however, that they will continue to pursue lawsuits and file new ones.
Mitchell Garabedian, a lawyer for scores of alleged victims of the former priest and convicted pedophile John Geoghan, said that “just because Bernard Cardinal Law resigns doesn’t mean everything’s okay now. There’s enormous rot, enormous decay in the archdiocese of Boston. Now it has to cleanse itself.”
Barbara Blaine, founder of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said she hoped that prosecutors, the news media and the public would now focus on New York’s Cardinal Edward Egan, Los Angeles’ Cardinal Roger Mahony and Law’s former deputies — “all of whom have done what Law himself has done, but who have avoided proper scrutiny largely because Law himself has become such a lightning rod.” But she stopped short of calling for those prelates to resign.
One of Geoghan’s alleged victims, Patrick McSorley, said Law’s resignation “is a little too late, but at least now we know we can start anew. I don’t want to hear anymore about anymore little kids being victimized by any more priests.”
Ferdinand reported from Boston.
Recruiting Teachers: Try m-o-n-e-y
By Pamela Ferdinand | July 18-24, 1998 for The Economist
How can you get good teachers in the public schools? Over the past few months. Massachusetts has been wondering. Across the country, demand for new teachers is expected to reach 2m over the next decade, and states are in fierce competition to get the best of the crop. So first Massachusetts has tried tests, and now it is trying bribes. It is not clear that either will work; but in a state that prides itself on a long history of quality education, the debate is raging red-hot.
The trouble began in April, when following the lead of 43 other states who already require such exams, Massachusetts held its first statewide test for nearly 1,800 candidates aspiring to teach in the public pools. To its astonishment, almost 60% of the candidates failed. Around 30% failed a basic reading and writing test, with questions along the lines of “What is a preposition?” and “Define the word ‘abolish’.” Some 63% failed the maths paper. In one section of the reading and writing test, a paragraph from “The Federalist Papers” was read aloud three times as dictation. Among the interesting words thereby introduced to the lexicon were “improbally”, “integraty”, “bodyes” and “relif”.
Confronted with such results, the state Board of Education did what any other self-preserving body would do: it voted to lower the pass-mark. Roughly 260 more of the candidates thereby slid through. Then the board reinstated the original, higher, pass-mark, prompting the interim education commissioner to blame the switch on “political forces”, and immediately resign.
After the test debacle, state officials had a better idea. After all, Massachusetts has a $1 billion budget surplus waiting to be spent: and what better cause could there be than education? A number of school systems in other states have already turned to such incentives to attract qualified candidates. Baltimore offers housing bonuses of $5,000 to new teachers, with a bigger bonus if they are willing to work in rough areas. Detroit offers bonuses of $3,000, and Los Angeles provides a $5,000 salary differential to teachers who are bilingual. New York city is recruiting (with the lure of generous starting salaries) from as far away as Austria, which has a surplus of teachers.
Now Massachusetts may cap the lot by offering teachers the biggest bonus in the country: $20,000 merely for signing the contract. If the law passes, 250 aspiring teachers could receive such a bonus. To put the sum in context, it is not faroff the average starting salary for a teacher in the Massachusetts public schools ($26,540) and $5,000 more than the median signing bonus received by all graduates from Harvard Business School who accepted job offers last year.
This idea is the brainchild of Thomas Birmingham, the president of the state Senate, who unashamedly describes it as “elitist”. There are several more around. Scott Harshbarger, the state attorney-general and the leading Democratic contender for the governor’s seat, has proposed $5,000 bonuses for 200 teachers who accept jobs in the state’s worst schools. Paul Cellucci, the acting governor and the leading Republican contender, would rather use the surplus for tax cuts, but he has also suggested full college scholarships for top high-school students willing to teach for four years in Massachusetts public schools. He has also suggested that all current teachers take the famous test.
Although international studies have shown no connection between education spending and achievement, the states like to think that extra money is at least the key to teacher satisfaction. One national study, by Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, has shown that low salaries often deter public school teachers from staying longer than a year in the profession, while others show that up to half America’s teachers leave before their fifth year of service. Bonuses could either be awarded in one lump sum, or spread out over several years to ensure that new teachers stay in their jobs. They could also be targeted and varied to attract teachers with particularly valued expertise–in maths, say, or foreign languages. According to John Silber, the chancellor of Boston University and chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Education, bonuses “certainly can’t hurt, and I suspect they can help a great deal.”
Others, however, believe a more systematic attempt is needed to improve teacher salaries, working conditions and retirement policies. “Attracting teachers is certainly important,” says Kathy Kelley, president of the Massachusetts Federation of Teachers, one of the state’s two main teachers’ unions. “Retaining them is even more important.” To all those familiar with the intransigence of unionised teachers, those remarks would seem to spell trouble.
Rent Control: The morning after
By Pamela Ferdinand | May 2-8, 1998 for The Economist
All across America, rent control is dying A out Not before time, some would say. What began as an emergency measure, to address housing shortages during the second world war. now looks mostly like a way to prevent landlords realizing the proper value of their properties. In recent years, California’s legislators have diluted restrictions governing how much private landlords may legally charge tenants. Illinois, together with several other states, has banned local governments from imposing rent control. Even in New York, where rent control is sacred in certain parts of the city, lawmakers came close last year to ending the regulated rents of millions of tenants.
In Massachusetts, rent control lasted for nearly 30 years in Boston. Cambridge and the nearby suburb of Brookline. But the frustrations of landlords, together with scandalous stories of well-heeled public servants living in cheap flats, eventually took their toll. Voters eliminated rent control by referendum i n November 1994, and lingering protections for disabled, elderly and low-income tenants finally expired last year.
There were dire predictions of hardship when rent control was abolished. Some of them came to pass- Cambridge (home of Harvard University), which had roughly 16,000 rental units under the strictest regulations in the state, recently reported that nearly 40% of tenants in regulated flats moved out after rent control ended. From a modest survey of 1.000 households, city officials concluded that decontrolled rents overall jumped by more than 50% between 1994 and 1997 (from an average of $504 a month to $775). outpacing market rates. Over the same period, complaints of eviction also rose by 33%.
Amy Fripp, an unemployed 42-year- old, had to leave the Cambridge house in which her family had lived since the 1960s when her landlord put up the rent by $250 a month. Another woman, who is elderly, faced eviction from her home after 50 years. “Rent control may be over, but its effects are far from over.” says Ellen Shachter, a lawyer with Cambridge and Somerville Le- gal Services, which last year represented 100 residents of formerly regulated proper- ties. “It’s clearly contributing to making Cambridge a city of rich and poor.”
It is true that Cambridge, once renowned for its economic and racial diversity, is on its way to becoming not only wealthier, but also more transient New households there are now less likely to include families and elderly people with incomes of less than $40,000, and more likely to include multiple room-mates and full-time college or graduate students.
Similar worries have been voiced in Boston, which had 16,000 strictly regulated units and another 40,000 units under a looser form of rent control known as “vacancy decontrol”. Evictions for non-payment of rent have increased by 20% since rent control was abolished, and more than 7,000 eviction complaints were handled by Boston’s housing court last year, com- pared to 5,000 in 1993 before rent control ended. With a vacancy rate of less than one percent across the city, moderately-priced housing is getting hard to find.
Yet the Cambridge study also showed that, when rent control ended, investment in housing and repairs went up. It showed, too, that although many people left. most stayed put, and that the number of non- white tenants in formerly regulated units has actually doubled. Nor is the end of rent control the only reason for turmoil in the housing market. Turn over in communities with large amounts of rented housing is al- ways high, especially among young people, and cities naturally “change their shape over time,” notes Henry Pollakowski. a housing economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Centre for Real Estate. Harvard Square, for instance, where chain stores like The Gap are thriving and rents climbing, may have lost much of its distinctiveness but remains as vibrant as ever. The strong economy, with a booming property market, may also have contributed to higher rents and higher eviction rates.
In order to soften the end of rent control, Boston secured federal rent subsidies for roughly 400 elderly, disabled and low- income tenants. Others were placed at the bottom of lengthy public-housing waiting lists. Brookline offered one-time relocation stipends to deregulated tenant households, and Cambridge has earmarked more than $i5m in local taxes for affordable housing programs. But many of the displaced tenants of formerly rent-controlled buildings have simply disappeared. Mark Snyder, the deputy administrator of Boston’s Rental Housing Resource Centre, has had a lot of post sent back to him marked “Addressee unknown.” Exactly what has become of these people, he has no idea.
The Door Opens After Years of Dispute; Black Hebrews Find Salvation in a Truce with Israeli Government
By Pamela Ferdinand | December 6, 1991 for The Miami Herald
JERUSALEM, Israel–Alta Stevenson hustles from kitchen to counter to table and back again as she tends to patrons in a one-room vegetarian restaurant.
“Sometimes there’s a line at the door,” she says in English, smiling and slightly exasperated. “See how busy we are?” It is the exasperation of waitresses worldwide. Only Stevenson, 43, who came to Israel 15 years ago from Detroit, is not an average waitress. She is black. She says she is Jewish. And now her name is Cocavatiyah.
Cocavatiyah is one of some 2,000 members of the Original Hebrew Israelite Nation of Jerusalem — they’re called Black Hebrews — living in Israel. They say they are descended from one of the 12 lost tribes of Israel. They insist they have a right to live in the Jewish homeland under the law of return, which promises Israeli citizenship to any Jew who applies for it.
Israelis, however, have refused to recognize Black Hebrews as Jews. Controversies involving more than a dozen unrelated Black Hebrew groups in the United States have fueled Israeli distrust; the indictment of Yahweh Ben Yahweh, leader of the Nation of Yahweh in Miami, on murder conspiracy charges is among the sore points.
Now, after years of dispute, the Israeli government has agreed to give Black Hebrews a chance to legally live and work in Israel.
“I came here because when I was growing up, there was something missing — you know what I mean?” Cocavatiyah explains quietly. “Even when I went to church, there was something missing. . . . Then I learned about the Black Hebrews. . . . When I came here, I felt at peace.”
The Black Hebrew sect now living in Israel was founded in the 1960s by Ben Carter, a former Chicago bus driver and foundry worker. One account says Carter, now known as Ben Ami, heard a voice from heaven telling him he had been chosen to take his people to the Promised Land. His followers say they were disillusioned with the “second-class citizen” status of blacks in 1960s America.
In 1967, Ben Ami took a group of black Americans to Liberia, where they lived for nearly two years. They came from Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Atlanta, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington. Their numbers grew, and in 1969 the Liberian government pressured them to leave. Some returned to the United States, but 39 followed Ben Ami to Israel.
In Israel, they were first detained at the airport and later granted permission to settle temporarily in an abandoned absorption center in the southern Negev desert town of Dimona. Many of the newcomers renounced their U.S. citizenship, then allowed their tourist visas to expire.
“As more and more people came, it caused some consternation,” recalls Zvenah Baht Israel, a community spokeswoman. “Israel has forever been in the state of asking ‘Who is a Jew?’ So, of course, if some black people show up, that just further complicates it.”
Relations were complicated, too, by Black Hebrew practices. Many are the same as other Jews: Sabbath, for instance, is observed from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday. Worship services include traditional blessings of the Torah, a scroll containing the first five books of the Old Testament. Black Hebrews circumcise their sons; many speak Hebrew.
But other practices are decidedly unfamiliar — such as the community’s practice of polygamy. Black Hebrew males are allowed to marry up to seven women. Ben Ami has three wives.
The conflict between the immigrants and Israel escalated through the ’70s and ’80s. Israel’s rabbis refused to recognize the Black Hebrews as true Jews because they did not have Jewish mothers. The Black Hebrews refused a proposed Israeli compromise — conversion to Judaism — because they said they were Jews already.
(On the other hand, Ethiopian Jews, often referred to as “falashas” or “outsiders,” are recognized as true Jews by Israel’s Orthodox community. It is believed they were converted to Judaism thousands of years ago.)
As more Black Hebrews arrived and remained in Israel illegally, the government began refusing entry to some black American tourists on suspicion that they were members of the sect. About 40 individuals were deported in 1986.
“The question was that individuals had overstayed their visas or were working in Israel without a permit,” said Immanuel Ben Yehudah, the Black Hebrews’ Washington-based spokesman. “That was the official charge, but some of those individuals had lived and worked there for more than a dozen years.”
Last year, a compromise was reached. The Israelis now permit registered Black Hebrews to live and work in Israel for renewable periods of one year. The visas also entitle community members to education, social services and medical benefits. In turn, the Black Hebrews agreed to reinstate their U.S. citizenship.
“The situation is not simple and quite delicate,” said a spokesman with the Israeli consulate in Miami. “They are not Jewish according to the Jewish religion. That’s why they cannot immediately become Israeli citizens. We have nothing against them and are trying to help them now. I think there has been progress already.”
Over the past few years, the U.S. government has given more than $3 million to Black Hebrews in Israel, according to U.S. Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.), chairman of the Europe and Middle East subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The funding has been used, in part, for housing and a school.
Hamilton calls the agreement an “uneasy but apparently durable compromise.” Nearly all of Dimona’s residents have been documented as U.S. citizens and have received visas, said Ben Yehudah. The travel embargo on visitors to the community also has been lifted.
Cocavatiyah, a former postal worker, says she is glad her community’s status is “normalizing.”
She has been working at the Eternity restaurant in Tel Aviv for five years. The cafe is simply decorated in yellow and white, with pictures of sandwiches from its creative menu on the wall.
The Black Hebrews are vegetarians, a practice that evolved as a form of preventive medicine, says Baht Israel.
“We didn’t always have access to medical facilities,” she says. “We had to look at alternatives. Four days a week, we don’t eat salt and four times a year for one week all adults eat raw vegetables. We fast on Shabbat completely.”
Cocavatiyah rotates responsibilities at the restaurant in Tel Aviv with five other women. When she is not scheduled to work, she returns to Dimona about 80 miles away to be with friends and family.
Dimona, a town in the Negev and in full view of an Israeli nuclear reactor, is now home to the majority of Black Hebrews. Other communities also inhabit the desert settlements of Arad and Mitzpe Ramon.
The landscape is arid and flat, an agoraphobic’s nightmare several hours’ bus ride from the bedouin markets of Beersheba and a short drive from the salty blue Dead Sea and the cliffs of Jordan.
Here, in a dark, cool sitting room, Baht Israel, 42, talks with a visitor about her life. She came to Israel in 1981 from Atlanta and her speech is peppered with expressions such as “you be praying,” and “shalom, sister.”
While the Black Hebrew dress code stresses modesty, much like that of Orthodox Jews, it resembles African tribal wear with flamboyant colors and geometric designs. Baht Israel wears a green and orange gown over an ivory turtleneck; American-style Docksider shoes peek out from underneath. Four fringes dangle from the corners of the garment, “symbolizing that African- Israelites are scattered to the four corners of the earth,” she says. Men dress simply in tunics with hand-crocheted caps, or kepote, but they tend to work in casual American-style dress.
Baht Israel says she sees a common thread running through her Baptist upbringing and her newfound faith.
“Although I wasn’t raised as a Hebrew Israelite, there were certain cultural similarities,” she says. “For example, when a woman is menstruating (in the Orthodox Jewish culture), she is separated from men. She doesn’t sleep with her husband or cook for the family. It is a time of spiritual renewal and her body is giving off toxins. When I was a child, in my household women were separated, too.”
Some of the community’s young men and women are too young to possess any American childhood memories. Shmooel Ben Israel, who did not want to give his former American name without permission from Ben Ami, is a 24-year-old construction worker who moved here with his mother 18 years ago from Washington. He plans to marry his first wife soon.
“At 19 or 20, we ‘come out’ into brotherhood or sisterhood and we can date with the permission of our parents,” he says. “People marry at all ages. Someone may have a wife or two in their 30s and want to marry again in their early 40s.”
Black Hebrew women say polygamy is liberating for them.
“A woman can do everything here but be a man, there are no limits,” says Baht Israel, who shares a husband and her child with his second wife and her two children. “We made the decision together about the other wife. If I’m separated because of menstrual activity, somebody has to care for him. Why not someone who’s a part of the family? This life style affords me time for self-development. I don’t have to be all things for everyone.
“My sister-wife is the sports person,” she explains. “When it’s time for basketball, she and him go to play and, shalom, shalom, I can go and read.”
Baht Israel says they worked out a system where each wife spends two weeks with their husband. The other wife, she says, “becomes a very dear friend and a family member at the same time.”
Economically, the Black Hebrews hope their changing status may be a windfall.
Community members earn money mainly by selling jewelry, working as domestics in Israeli homes or as construction workers. Now that many have work permits, they are hoping to capitalize on Israel’s growing construction needs.
Ten percent of each person’s earnings go into a central fund that provides food, medicine, education and housing. Currently, an average of four families share a household, says Baht Israel.
Administrative duties are divided according to rank. Brothers and Sisters are titles for the common members of the community. Above them are Crown Brothers and Crown Sisters, who run day-to-day operations, and then the Sahreem or Ministers, officials who run many of the group’s international outposts, according to Ben Yehudah.
Ben Ami remains the Israeli-based spiritual leader of the sect with his advisers, the Holy Council, also called the Princes or Apostles. They run a central office that handles economic affairs, negotiating work contracts for men who work in the outside community.
Foreigners who want to join the community must pay their own way to Israel, Baht Israel says.
“It has worked well both in hard times and in times when we were a little more prosperous,” she says. “We’re not millionaires. We get the menial jobs.”
Still, community members say life in Israel provides an escape from America’s crime-ridden society and what they believe is the oppression of blacks.
When asked if she misses her comfortable America, Baht Israel replies, “not really.”
“We were not self-determining,” she said. “It was always somebody else’s culture. Our struggle was to recapture our identity. We were denied access to our culture, and just look at the crime rates and life expectancy rates among American blacks. Finally, the thought came, could there be something else?
“We have developed a model for drug-free living, if nothing else,” she says. “People used to say, ‘What’s a black person going to do in Israel?’ But our longevity says something in itself.”
“Going back to the United States is our last thought,” says Ben Israel. “We have family there, but we came out here for a particular reason: to save the lives of our people.”
Readers Grapple with Issue
By Pamela Ferdinand | March 28, 1992 for The Miami Herald
Moved by Theresa Ann Pearson’s plight, busy South Floridians paused to ponder the larger question of who should decide whether a child lives or dies: God or us?
“When I first read about this, I wanted immediately for them to give other children the baby’s organs,” agonized Shirley Miller of Pembroke Pines. “But then I thought of the precedent that this would set and what would happen if we did this.”
About 200 people called TeleHerald lines Friday, most expressing support for giving Theresa’s organs to other children in need.
“The baby is going to die, why not let something good come out of it?” said Robin Katzenstein of Davie. “Give her death some dignity.”
But several callers felt the baby should be allowed to die peacefully.
“I think the baby should be able to live, not be cut up,” said Gloria Traitz of Miami. “What’s next? Taking the organs of old people who are going to die anyway?”
As a Catholic, June Fowler from Miramar said, she opposes abortion.
“Yet I believe in this case God would expect us to use these parts if we could,” she said.
Some callers had harsh words for Judge Estella Moriarty, despite her reputation as a defender of children’s rights.
“They needed a strong judge who would use common sense where children’s lives could be saved,” said Dr. Ronald Marx of Hollywood. “This judge was a gutless moron.”
Another Hollywood caller, Gerald Weiner, said Moriarty’s decision was “the most morally wrong decision ever made by a court.”
“I really think she should have thought of all the kids that are going to die because they didn’t get an organ,” he said. “What about their right to life?”
Underlying all the heart-felt opinions was a deeper message. Dr. Alexander Goldenberg put it this way:
“No one in their right mind wants to see a baby suffer. All the world loves a baby.”
Relative: “It’s bigger than they can handle”
By Pamela Ferdinand | March 27, 1992 for The Miami Herald
Even when tiny Theresa was still in her womb, Laura Campo was concerned about other children who could benefit from the baby’s organs, her sister said Thursday.
“Laura said, ‘I have to eat for the baby to be healthy, I have to take care of her for somebody else’ ” Donna Bertrand said. “She found it really hard, but she kept going.”
Once Theresa was born, Campo and Justin Pearson explained tenderly to their children that the baby was small and very ill. The couple have two healthy children together: Ashley, 3, Justin, 4. From a previous marriage Campo has another son, Sammy, 13.
Campo, who moved to South Florida nine years ago, is being comforted by a close-knit family. Her mother, Susan Clark, lives in Coral Springs in a separate apartment downstairs from Campo, while two of her three sisters live nearby. A third sister lives in Rhode Island.
Clark hovered over granddaughter Theresa at Broward General Medical Center earlier this week and contemplated the financial strains posed by her daughter’s troubled pregnancy.
“Their finances are right down to the wire,” she said. “They’re making their rent, they’re making their grocery bills, but they’re caught between their insurance and their paychecks on this.
“They’re caught in the middle of this, and it’s a lot bigger than they can handle.”
For more than five years, Campo, 30, has worked as a waitress at The Feedbag restaurant. Pearson, also 30, is a cement worker with Area Paving and Excavating.
“Laura works when she has to work and laughs and jokes with the customers,” said her boss, Paul Catsicas. He said customers had been calling all night with prayers and best wishes for the couple. “I don’t think there’s anyone who doesn’t like her. She’s just that kind of person, and Justin’s a nice, quiet guy.”
Bertrand said Pearson is “like a rock to lean on, he’s really been a great emotional support for her. They discuss things on an open level. They don’t keep their feelings inside and get too distraught over it.”
This experience will change their lives forever, she said.
From now on, both Campo and Pearson are “bound and determined” to change the law for future babies.
“Their hearts are in the right place.”
Makeshift Hospitals Tending to Wounded
By Pamela Ferdinand | August 27, 1992 for The Miami Herald
Two field hospitals sprang up overnight amid the devastation of South Dade, treating hundreds of hurricane victims and attracting medical assistance from across the country.
Off Krome Avenue in Homestead, local paramedics and medical teams from Indiana and South Carolina transformed a low-slung turquoise senior citizens center into a M.A.S.H.-like outpost Tuesday evening. At the South Dade Government Center in Cutler Ridge, volunteers turned office space into an emergency room to help relieve Dade’s overburdened hospitals.
By Wednesday morning in Homestead, dozens of people waited on beige folding chairs. The hum of a nearby power generator drowned their voices, and the constant flow of helicopters airlifting the most seriously injured patients to hospitals kicked up dust and dirt around them.
Inside, patients lay on rumpled white sheets covering dark green military cots. An elderly woman closed her eyes as a clear intravenous tube dripped liquid into her veins. A 2-week-old boy screamed as hovering doctors in camouflage sought to cure his dehydration.
And at 10:54 a.m., a 20-year-old woman gave birth.
Evelyn Greer said she hadn’t expected to go into labor that day. She wasn’t about to name her 7-pound baby boy after the hurricane.
“Andrew?” said Greer, who lost her Leisure City home to the storm. “No way, not after all this.” She named her son Calvin.
Another homeless patient, 77-year-old Rafael Dillanueva, lost his trachea tube during the hurricane. Gasping for air, he had not left the hospital since it opened Tuesday. Doctors said he was healthy and gave him a place to sleep, but no one was available to drive him to a shelter.
Most people, however, came to the hospital seeking prescription refills or treatment for minor injuries after stepping on nails or getting cut by glass at their battered homes.
Esther Agnew, 43, caught insulation debris in her left eye. Doctors taped gauze over her eyes and gave her a general checkup.
She says they also gave her some solace. Seeing and talking to other people in similar straits was comforting, she said, even if it was in the hospital.
“We’ve been feeling like we’re out here alone, just surviving,” Agnew said. “So this is great.”
In Cutler Ridge, doctors emerged tired and sweaty from the humid makeshift emergency room.
Dr. Richard Swihart flew in from Parkview Hospital in Fort Wayne, Ind. After four hours of sleep, his only break Wednesday was for lunch — spaghetti and meatballs out of a plastic packet.
Wednesday morning, four doctors from Palm Beach County hospitals arrived at the scene — a multilayered municipal structure littered with broken glass, gravel and cans. Massive uprooted palm trees stretched across the concrete steps and dead birds rotted on the sidewalks.
The doctors, who brought antibiotics and surgical gloves, said they were shocked.
“You can smell it in the air,” said Richard Levin, a podiatrist at Palms West Hospital. “It doesn’t smell like South Florida.”
The Homestead field hospital is at Krome Avenue and 16th Street. The hospital at the South Dade Government Center is at Southwest 211th Street and 108th Avenue. The hospitals have lists of open pharmacies where people can get their prescriptions filled.
