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This article was originally published in the Holy Cross Magazine, Fall 2000. By: Margret LeRoux Shelter
from the Storm 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 business 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 1500 members who live and work in a wide geographic area from Delaware to the North Carolina border, Mary House gave Holy Cross graduates 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 $1 0,000 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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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