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By
Margaret LeRoux
The two Holy Cross alumni introduced to each other at a
meeting of the alumni club must have seemed at first glance
an unlikely pair. One owns an Internet company and is president
of the Holy Cross Alumni Club of Greater Washington, D.C.;
the other describes himself as "a professional beggar" and
heads an organization that provides shelter for homeless
families. But when Mike Kennedy '84
met Bill Murphy '73, the values and ideals that inspired them as students drew
them together as alumni.
The postgraduate experiences of the two men could not have been more different.
Kennedy, who says he "always loved computers," obtained his first computer job
in the Holy Cross data center. He went on to obtain an M.B.A. degree from the
University of Virginia and has been in the Internet businesses for the past six
years.
Murphy, on the other hand, was an economics major who took to heart the social
activism he discovered as a Holy Cross student. After he took in a homeless man
to share his room on campus, there was no turning back. Upon graduation, he went
to work as a handyman for the Community for Creative Non-Violence. There he met
his wife, Sharon. The couple founded Mary House in 1981 when they took in their
first homeless family.
Today Bill and Sharon Murphy head an organization of 10 homes for families, all
in the neighborhood of Catholic University in urban Washington, D.C. Their tenants
include refugees from Bosnia, El Salvador, Cameroon and the Dominican Republic;
people who have nowhere else to turn have found a haven with the Murphys and
Mary House.
"We
wanted our children to learn kindness and caring," Murphy says. The couple has
four children who grew up sharing their home with a succession of homeless
families.
Last May, Holy Cross honored Murphy with the Sanctae Crucis Award for his lifetime
of distinguished achievement in community service. When Kennedy heard Murphy
speak about Mary House at the club meeting, it struck a familiar chord. His father,
Thomas L. Kennedy '58, and mother, Mary, raised funds for St. Francis House,
a homeless shelter in Boston, from 1983 until they retired and moved to Cape
Cod in 1998.
Kennedy offered the services of his Internet company, Competitive Innovations
(where five of the eight employees are Holy Cross graduates), to help set up
a Web site for Mary House. Despite their divergent experiences, he and Murphy
discovered that they both remained friends with Rev. Joseph LaBran, S.J., whose
commitment to Catholic ideals inspired each of them as students.
As he learned more about Mary House, Kennedy decided to take up the homeless
shelter's cause with the Washington, D.C., Alumni Club's board of directors.
They agreed to adopt Mary House as the club's charity, and over the past year,
the relationship has benefited both the homeless shelter and its
benefactors.
"Our
involvement with Mary House has rallied the club," Kennedy says. With 500 members
who live and work in a wide geographic area from Delaware to the North Carolina
border, Mary House gave Holy Cross graduates a focal point. Their generous financial
support enabled the College to offer four
summer internships at Mary House.
"At
first, we thought we'd only have one intern, but when the word got out, several
students expressed an interest in coming," Murphy says.
Kate
Robinson '01 and Celeste Narganes '01, two of the interns, said they did a little
bit of everything from mowing lawns and painting apartments to leading activities
at Mary House's summer camp and driving refugee families
to medical appointments.
The
two interns lived with four families who came from Bosnia and El Salvador.
Narganes, an English and Spanish major, was able to put her foreign language
skills
to good use.
"It
was a humbling experience," she says. "Some of the people we helped were professionals
in their own countries; they had to leave everything behind when they came to
this country. Here, they're working at any job they can
get."
Robinson said the experience at Mary House has influenced her to seek more volunteer
work after graduation. She plans to serve with either the Jesuit Volunteers International
(JVI) or AmeriCorps. Another of the summer interns, Carrie
Croucher '00, is staying at Mary House for the year as an AmeriCorps volunteer.
The
interns were inspired by Murphy's example. "He doesn't own anything for
himself," Narganes comments. "It's all for Mary House."
During the summer, members of the Washington, D.C., alumni club joined the interns
in work days and social events at Mary House. They organized a tag sale that
raised $700 and sold raffle tickets that yielded another $4,000.
Earlier this year the Alumni Club helped Murphy pay off a mortgage for one of
the Mary House properties in a unique way. Murphy went on a challenge diet: he
lost 35 pounds and raised $35,000 to pay off a balloon mortgage due in May. The
Holy Cross Alumni Club members were major contributors and celebrated with Murphy
at a St. Patrick's Day luncheon.
This fall the Alumni Club pledged and walked in the 13th annual Help the Homeless
Walkathon on the Mall. Mary House interns had a goal of raising $10,000
for the shelter through the walkathon. Helping publicize the event were Alumni
Club members Chris Mathews '67 of NBC News, and Congressman Jim
Moran '67.
Though he turns over leadership of the Washington, D.C. Alumni Club at the end
of this year, Kennedy says he hopes the relationship with Mary House will become
a club tradition.
"Especially
since Bill is a fellow graduate, it makes it even more meaningful," Kennedy
says. "He stands for everything Holy Cross stands for."
Murphy often shares the following anecdote when he talks to people about Mary
House. When he first became aware of the problems of homeless people, his thoughts
were that "someone should do something." Then it struck him-"I'm someone, and
I could do something."
Following
his example are a lot of "someones" from the Holy Cross community.
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