Vote for Joe

Went to Orange, Texas where we met with Paul and Ruby Mayeux, wonderful couple who are tremendously on fire for God. Several years ago, Paul started the Apostolate Against Pornography (and other public obscenities). He talks in area churches exhorting people to boycott stores that display, for instance, pornagraphic magazines — including stores with such mainstream magazines as Cosmopolitan and others that have, in essence, become ‘pornographic’ as well… Paul and Ruby are also quite active in the Pro-Life Movement and while in Orange, Paul and I were interviewed by the local newspaper — with a primary focus on Pro-Life issues. Paul explained to the reporter that he and Ruby have seven children: “…all gifts from God.” I told the reporter that Paul and Ruby are, indeed, excellent examples of what we call: “extra-mile Americans.” Note: Paul explained to me that he and his wife, in line with Catholic Church teaching, don’t use artificial contraception whatsoever because many can be abortificients, that is they can actually cause an abortion shortly after the embryo is formed. As an addendum, I told a reporter from Beaumont’s newspaper that artificial contraception has also made it a lot easier for people to have affairs, and in that (among a number of other factors), we are seeing a tremendous breakdown of the nuclear family in this country, partly because of this.

We drove further south to Lufkin, Texas where Diboll High School football coach Jimmy Davis attends a Bible study every Thursday morning at Starbuck’s Coffee Shop here. He told me, because of his Christianity, he will never “cuss out or berate a player.”… I then met with the mayor of Oak Grove, Texas who was in Lufkin visiting. Jerry Holder said his most recent political success had been getting a local environmental board to force the clean up of a local “informal junkyard” of cars that were leaking anti-freeze, oil, transmission fluid… I couldn’t help but think when he was talking, that: Cars all over the country leak this stuff on a regular basis, then it rains, and a significant amount of this hazardous fluid gets washed down storm drains — and into the nation’s waterways. In fact, I have several times read that this is a significant form of water pollution that doesn’t get talked about much. Why? Because we love our motor vehicles too much… Later in the day we stood in solidarity with members of “Lufkin for Life” who were picketing in front of a Planned Parenthood site. (They do it twice a week.) Lufkin for Life director Robert Dickmens told me: “Everyday more children are dying. As a Church, we can’t just say: ‘Oh, well.'” Covenant Presbyterian Church pastor Mark O’Neil, who was also out holding a sign this day, told me: “They (people in the abortion industry) are peddlers of death, immorality and promiscuity. Someone has to take a stand.” Later in the afternoon, I told a reporter at Lufkin’s daily newspaper that these protesters were, indeed, examples of “extra-mile Americans” who are willing to stand up vocally for their beliefs… Tonight we met with Paul and Rita O’Reilly. Rita grew up in the oppression of the Pol Pot Regime in Cambodia’s ‘Killing Fields.’ She told tragic stories of life in the work camps there in the early ’70s, and of the U.S. special forces who bravely helped her and some of her people escape. Her father was killed in the war, she lost a five-year-old brother in the escape, and her mother was shot in a refugee camp after the escape. She has since immigrated to the U.S., married Paul and they are both quite active Christians. In fact, Paul, 41, has given up a career and gone back to college to get a degree in Rehabilitation so he can help troubled youth. “I want to help inspire youth to think another way,” said Paul.

We headed west into Longview, Texas where I interviewed Lori Dohanich, who is a religion teacher at St. Mary’s school here. She told me she teaches a unit to 8th graders about social justice issues, focusing specifically on the era of the ’60s when a number of these issues took center stage: civil rights, poverty, the environment… She said she teaches students about “real heroes” like Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, Mother Theresa… And she explains to the youth there is a difference between, say, being a “great athlete and being a person of great character.”… Speaking of great (or sort of great) athletes, however, we did meet Joseph Pipak in Longview, a former pitcher for the old Dallas Eagles minor league team. His claim to fame: He got the famous Stan Musial to ground out to second in the only time he ever faced him. He autographed our childrens’ journals.

In Tallulah, Louisiana I met with Darryl Ellerbee, former local caseworker for the Youth Opportunity (YO) Program. A federally funded program, Ellerbee said a $20 million dollar grant was awarded to three parishes (counties) in Louisiana. He said people between the ages of 14 and 21 are offered GED training and scholarship money for technical schools, and so on. Tallulah is one of the poorest areas in Louisiana,and it shows. Half the downtown is boarded up, a quite noticeable amount of the housing around the downtown is, at best, delapidated shacks… We then headed to Monroe, Lousiana, which has it’s share of poverty as well. The St. Vincent de Paul Society has established a “Pharmacy” to help. North East Louisiana Community Pharmacy Board member Cindy Smith told me the community pharmacy distributes medication to low income people. Nurses, techinicians and office people volunteer their time and area doctors donate samples, nursing homes donate unused medication, etc. And speaking of the poor… Later in the day, I told Monroe’s News Star Reporter Christy Futch that 24,000 people starve to death every day in the world, which means we experience a “silent tsunami” every 6 and 1/4th days. Ms. Futch said she found that absolutely “shocking.”

This week I told the Scott County Times in Forest, Mississippi that the Catholic Rural Life Association has come out with a statement calling for a moratorium on big confinement farms for cattle, chicken and so on. The farm conditions prove tremendously cruel to animals, generate large amounts of pollution run-off, and these progressively bigger farms are driving the small farmers off their land. Forest, Mississippi, by the way, has a huge Tyson Chicken complex that helps drive a lot of the local economy. (There goes a few votes.)… While in the area, I also interviewed Sr. Nona Meyerhofer, site director of the EXCEL program in nearby Morton, Mississippi. Among her many duties, she runs an after school program for Hispanic children to help them keep up with their studies, and with assimilation into the American culture in general… We then headed west to Pearl, Mississippi where I interviewed Jo Haley, 43, in regard to our ongoing study of poverty issues in the South. Mrs. Haley said growing up in Pearl, her father was a share cropper and later a truck driver. Her mother was a deaf mute. For four years they lived in one room in the Russums Motel, “apt. 34,” she remembered. Jo said her and her sister, and mother and father, all slept in the same bed in that room. And she remembers more than a few meals being: a piece of bread, mayonaise, black pepper “…and we’d just think about a tomato,” she lamented. I couldn’t help but wonder how many children were going to bed tonight in the “Delta” area of Mississippi hungry. Then I couldn’t help but wonder why that’s so.