Baker Victory Services and Baker’s Cause for Canonization: Part IV

The possibility of Baker’s canonization has provided city officials with a reason to revitalize Lackawanna’s downtown area in anticipation of increased tourism, and there are signs that these efforts are starting. In 2001, the City Council postponed zoning changes in order to assure that it would be flexible enough to allow for major hotel development for tourists.  The basilica already consistently attracts about twenty to thirty visitors each hour to view its architecture or pay respects to Baker and Our Lady of Victory, but tourism would increase dramatically with any further progress in Baker’s cause, such as his formal beatification. Monsignor Wurtz commented, “You’re going to need a ticket to drive down Ridge Road.”  Our Lady of Victory is central to many of Lackawanna’s community events, like the annual chicken barbecue, which sells out days ahead of time.  Moreover, the annual “Father Baker Day” celebration draws visitors from across the U.S. The OLV Homes of Charity and BVS have been able to offer some recourse to the steel plant closings by becoming one of the larger local employers with 800-1,000 workers. With its long history of contributions to the communal, economic and spiritual life of Lackawanna, Baker’s “City of Charity” presents a viable alternative for Lackawanna’s post-industrial identity. Stories of Baker’s life and works and the hope for his canonization serve as more positive identity for the city than the story of Lackawanna Steel. In fact, a city sign on Ridge Road near the corner of Abbot Road welcomes visitors to the city of Lackawanna, “the home of Father Baker.” The steel industry may have been incapable of following through for Lackawanna, but there are few indications that community members feel the same about Baker.

Please open November and December 2008 in the sidebar to the right for previous excerpts. You can read them in order, if you like. 


The preceding is an excerpt from the doctoral dissertation, Father Nelson H. Baker: The Practices of Making a Saint for Buffalo, NY, Heather A. Hartel (2006) [Copyright registration number TX0006385881 / 2006-08-18].  Footnotes are not included because of formatting problems, but may be viewed in the original document downloadable from here. 

Baker Victory Services and Baker’s Cause for Canonization: Part III

Most of the original buildings that Baker and McPherson built are still intact, but some of their purposes have changed in accordance with the BVS programs. The first floor of the infant home currently houses the new Baker Victory Dental Center. The high school educates troubled youth from the Day Treatment Program. The orphan home is an office building and a care facility for severely handicapped children. And, BVS has continued to expand its facilities with recent projects like more cottages for troubled youth and new cottages and a swimming facility for the severely handicapped on Martin Road. It also opened Father Baker Manor, a retirement and nursing home, in 1994 in a Buffalo suburb.  In accordance with the system established by Baker, all of these services still rely on donations, and devotion to Our Lady of Victory continues to bring financial support.

In addition to continuing the tradition of involving the laity in maintaining a “legacy of care,” the Our Lady of Victory site has increased its appeal as a pilgrimage destination with the progress in Baker’s cause for canonization. In 1986, four years after the major Bethlehem steel plant closings, the current executive director of the Institutes, Monsignor Robert C. Wurtz; Monsignor Robert E. Murphy, OLV’s pastor from 1971 to 1993; and diocesan historian and archivist, Monsignor Walter O. Kern approached Bishop Edward Head about beginning Baker’s cause. Baker’s potential to be a saint was not a new idea in the Buffalo region, for in the sermon for Baker’s funeral, Archbishop Thomas Hickey likened Baker’s life to that of to Saint Alfonso Ligouri.  During the 40s and 50s the Victorian magazine printed letters of thanks to Baker and Our Lady Victory for spiritual favors. And, there is a strong local oral tradition of the many miracles Baker performed during his lifetime and after it. The Vatican approved the diocese’s intention to start the cause and gave Baker the title “Servant of God” in 1987, the first step towards canonization, and the diocese, with Rome’s recommendation, made Baker more accessible to his devotees by moving his body from the Holy Cross Cemetery to a crypt in the basilica in 1999.  Since this move, the parish and diocese have been anxiously awaiting news from Rome confirming one of Baker’s miracles that are under consideration by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. The community’s hope for the future fulfillment of this possibility is palpable. Each mass in the OLV basilica, at the Holy Name Church on Bailey Avenue in Buffalo, and at St. Mary of the Angel’s church in Olean, New York ends with a prayer to Our Lady of Victory for Baker’s canonization, and employees at the Institutes involved in Baker’s promotion feel that the call from Rome declaring Baker to be Blessed could come any day. In an unofficial internet poll of visitors to the Buffalo.com website in December 2000, two thirds of the 450 respondents thought Baker would be canonized in the near future. 




Please open November and December 2008 in the sidebar to the right for previous excerpts. You can read them in order, if you like. 


The preceding is an excerpt from the doctoral dissertation, Father Nelson H. Baker: The Practices of Making a Saint for Buffalo, NY, Heather A. Hartel (2006) [Copyright registration number TX0006385881 / 2006-08-18].  Footnotes are not included because of formatting problems, but may be viewed in the original document downloadable from here. 

Baker Victory Services and Baker’s Cause for Canonization:Part II

The Our Lady of Victory parish and Institutes have continued to survive by reconfiguring its programs to meet current societal conditions and needs. One of the best examples of this transformation is the changing role of the infant home and maternity hospital. The infant home had begun taking developmentally disabled children in 1956 and this program has expanded.  Whereas most unwed mothers surrendered their babies to the Institutes in the early 60s, by the 1980s, 90-95% of the mostly teenage mothers who gave birth at OLV kept their babies.  The Institutes started a “Choose Life” program in the early 70s to provide an alternative to legalized abortion and provided inexperienced unwed mothers with medical care, counseling and parenting classes through the Responsible Adolescent Parenting (RAP) program, established in 1976.  Currently, the maternity hospital is a prenatal care center. In addition, Baker Victory Services (BVS), created in 1996, continued offering adoption services by developing an overseas adoption program, and it runs a residential home, the Dorothy Miller Residence, for young mothers and their infants.

BVS currently provides families and children in the Lackawanna and Buffalo community with a variety of other services as well, which include programs for those with special needs. Children, aged five to twenty-one, who cannot function in more conventional school settings because of their disruptive behavior can be referred to a Day Treatment Program which provides them with clinical services in an educational setting. BVS has outpatient and residential services for children and adolescents with serious emotional disturbances. There are also residential services for severely developmentally disabled children including a respite program which offers temporary relief to families from the stress that can accompany caring for a special needs child at home. And, family services include a preventative program that makes help available for families dealing with issues like sexual abuse, domestic violence and drug and alcohol abuse. 



Please open November and December 2008 in the sidebar to the right for previous excerpts. You can read them in order, if you like. 


The preceding is an excerpt from the doctoral dissertation, Father Nelson H. Baker: The Practices of Making a Saint for Buffalo, NY, Heather A. Hartel (2006) [Copyright registration number TX0006385881 / 2006-08-18].  Footnotes are not included because of formatting problems, but may be viewed in the original document downloadable from here. 

Baker Victory Services and Baker’s Cause for Canonization: Part I

In 1959, Lackawanna celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of its incorporation with “Steel-a-rama,” a performance of the city’s history that covered everything from its Native American past and Joseph Ellicott’s land survey to Father Baker’s charity homes and Walter Scranton’s steel mill to the WPA projects and World War II, all culminating in a grand finale entitled, “We are Americans.”  The city logo on the cover of the performance’s program contains a silhouettes of the steel factories on the left and the Our Lady of Victory Institutes on the right. In addition, the first few pages of the program contain pictures of both Bethlehem Steel and Baker’s Institutes, emphasizing Lackawanna’s identification with both charity and industry. By the end of the 20th century, Lackawanna could no longer lay claim to being the “City of Steel.” However, it could still maintain itself as the site of Father Baker’s charity Institutes, and the Institutes have helped fill an emotional, economic and social void left by Bethlehem Steel. In addition, with its slow progress towards revitalization, Lackawanna’s future has, to a large degree, become invested in the possibility of Baker’s canonization. If Father Baker becomes a saint, the entire community will benefit. Baker’s sainthood, thus, offers a beacon of economic recovery and could be a reliable solution to revitalizing the city.

While Bethlehem Steel’s industry was weakening and damaging Lackawanna and changes in the Buffalo diocese were bringing about the closing of many Catholic services, Baker Victory Services and the OLV basilica and parish were able to remain active providers of health and educational services, community events and devotional activities. The Buffalo diocese has reduced its number of schools, parishes and institutions through closings and consolidations in recent years. From 1974-2004, about 100 diocesan schools closed, and in 1997, the Catholic Health Care system was established to centralize management of Catholic hospitals in the diocese .  These changes did not leave OLV unscathed. The parish no longer operates a diocesan high school and the grade school’s principal scrambles each year for enrollment.  In addition, there were concerns over the possible closing of the OLV hospital as it faced cutbacks and some of its services were transferred to Mercy Hospital.  The hospital, however, did not close, and there are plans in the works for transforming it and some of the infant home into a senior care center which would create about 235 new jobs in a “village-like community” and include a 74 bed nursing home, 74 low-income senior apartments and a program to care for seniors in their homes.  Moreover, the parish remains vibrant with 2,300-2,500 families. 

[Currently, the parish has begun renovations to the basilica basement to include interactive videos and more information about Baker to prepare the way for more visitors should Baker become canonized]. Listen to a WBFO story here. ]

Please open November and December 2008 in the sidebar to the right for previous excerpts. You can read them in order, if you like. 


The preceding is an excerpt from the doctoral dissertation, Father Nelson H. Baker: The Practices of Making a Saint for Buffalo, NY, Heather A. Hartel (2006) [Copyright registration number TX0006385881 / 2006-08-18].  Footnotes are not included because of formatting problems, but may be viewed in the original document downloadable from here. 

Excerpt 3: Father Baker's cause in context with Bethlehem Steel

City officials have also had to confront Lackawanna’s reputation as a dying steel town. At the height of the layoffs’ effects, mayor Thomas E. Radich attempted to restore hope by referring to Lackawanna as “the city that refused to die” in a 1984 booklet celebrating the city’s 75th anniversary.  In 2000, Mayor John Kurayk also worked to disprove public perceptions and improve public relations with letters to the Buffalo News.   However, much of Kurayk’s damage control was directed toward rebuilding the city’s reputation after a national media frenzy in September 2002 when an al-Quada terrorist cell turned up amidst the city’s several thousand Yemeni residents.  Bishop Hanry Mansell used this incident to encourage the media to rediscover the history of Baker’s “City of Charity.”  Despite its best efforts and the greater Buffalo area’s claims of renewal, Lackawanna remains a casualty of Bethlehem Steel’s withdrawal, and although the downtown area is seeing some improvements, economic redevelopment plans have thus far been incapable of restoring the city’s previous prosperity.

Please open November and December 2008 in the sidebar to the right for previous excerpts. You can read them in order, if you like. 


The preceding is an excerpt from the doctoral dissertation, Father Nelson H. Baker: The Practices of Making a Saint for Buffalo, NY, Heather A. Hartel (2006) [Copyright registration number TX0006385881 / 2006-08-18].  Footnotes are not included because of formatting problems, but may be viewed in the original document downloadable from here. 

My article on miracles in U of Chicago's Sightings online mag

Sightings

March 19, 2009

A Crackdown on Miracles?

— Heather A. Hartel

There has been a recent flood of speculation that silence will be considered golden by the Vatican in cases of apparitions, revelations, visions, and miraculous happenings such as weeping statues and stigmata, at least until officials conduct a formal investigation and give permission for the claim to go public if it passes muster.  According to reports, a Vatican spokesperson for the Congregation on the Doctrine of Faith denied that the 1978 "vademecum" handbook is being revised to mandate silence as a first test of authenticity; but rumors of a Vatican crackdown on miraculous claims appeared in a number of media sources - from FoxNews TV to the Irish Catholic Times - in mid-January, and continue to reappear in many other sources without mention of the Vatican's denial.

These rumors originated from more conservative elements of the Church, specifically those who publish Petrus, the online Italian periodical in which the news first appeared.  Writers of the original report fervidly view unapproved extraordinary events as hazardous to the faith and risky for the faithful.  However, the wide spread of the news might be driven by other forces, such as public anxiety about the Church's slowness to declare the final word on some of the more popular Marian visions of the late twentieth century, most notably those at Medjugorje.  The jury is still out on the validity of the visions there in 1981, yet pilgrims have been visiting the site for more than two decades, and there is little evidence of the movement waning.

The speculations and the Vatican's denial also represent tensions that can arise between popular and official forces in cases of miraculous happenings.  Extraordinary incidents can become deeply contested and reveal power struggles between popular devotional practices and official regulation.  The enthused faithful often have different ideas about the meaning of the miraculous than Church authorities have; and the authorities, in turn, feel an urgent obligation to prevent the laity from being misled.  The norm is for authorities to try to redirect or reign in popular devotion until investigations have concluded, sometimes without much success.

A good question to pose, then, is whether the devotional life of the Catholic Church should happen from the top down or from the bottom up, or whether its development should continue to be the result of an ongoing negotiation between the people and the hierarchy.  New stricter regulations would tip the scales in favor of Church authorities, something that would certainly appeal to authors of the Petrus article, but that might cause fear and anxiety for those whose spiritual lives have come to depend upon alleged miraculous happenings.

When people are permitted to recognize miraculous events before an official decision, devotional fires are fueled by the hope that a connection with the divine exists.  But if the Church were to require silence, these happenings would be prevented from entering devotional networks in the first place, and popular movements would stand little chance of participating in the dynamic dialectic with the hierarchy that characterizes these kinds of events and helps maintain a lively culture of Catholic devotion.

The claims of Petrus bring up another issue as well.  Because innovative technologies can spread news of Marian apparitions, visions, and miracles with lighting speed, devotional culture has taken on its own virtual life in the twenty-first century.  Thus, the need to reduce the number of suspect miracles must seem all the more pressing to some factions within the Church.  But if the Vatican were to actually start cracking down on false claims and demanding silence, it would also have to contend effectively with today's and tomorrow's technology.  It seems unlikely that the Vatican, which has only had its own Youtube channel for a few months, would be up to such a task anytime soon.

Given virtual devotional culture, cases like Garabandal (a site to which pilgrims continue to flock despite official statements that the occurrences there were not supernatural), and publications like Mary's Message to the World (1991, 2005) by self-proclaimed Texas visionary Annie Kirkwood (which remains an underground bestseller), it is unlikely that Church authority will be able to completely control either the story of a compelling miraculous event or vision or the power behind it, even if new stricter policies are enacted.  At least for now, it appears that the dialectical development of devotional Catholicism will continue, despite efforts to award the Vatican with a home field advantage.

References:
http://www.papanews.it/news.asp?IdNews=11058

Excerpt 2: Father Baker's cause in context with Bethlehem Steel

 The first large scale layoffs occurred in 1977, a few months after the Blizzard of ’77, when the plant cut 3,500 jobs. Layoffs culminated in 1982 when, two days after Christmas, the plant announced that 7,300 workers were to be let go.  News reports in national papers emphasized the economic impact of these lay-offs by relaying stories of middle aged workers who had been earning over twelve dollars an hour at the plant settling for jobs that paid three to six dollars an hour.  Reports also characterized the emotional consequences of the layoffs. Workers described feelings of anger and frustration, and ex-steel workers missed their jobs.  Reasons given by Bethlehem for closing the plant included stringent environmental controls, global competition and high property taxes. 

Despite these cutbacks, the company continued to operate a galvanized steel division and coke ovens at its Lackawanna plant. It was fined for air pollution in 1989 and required to install millions of dollars worth of pollution control equipment. Moreover, local residents expressed resentment over the coke dust in the air because the company took away jobs and left behind “the dirtiest part of the process.”  By 2000, Bethlehem Steel had dropped from the S&P index of top five hundred companies and closed its coke ovens, leaving only 340 jobs in its galvanized steel division.  It filed for bankruptcy in 2001and transferred what little remained of its assets to the International Steel Group in 2003.  The five mile strip of land and empty buildings on the shore of Lake Erie remain largely undeveloped as of 2006. (Note: Some development since 2006 involved the installation of a set of wind turbines, which have had their own issues.)

Lackawanna’s struggle for economic recovery and redevelopment has been a challenge. Bethlehem Steel had been paying more than half of the city’s property taxes for years, and the loss of its revenue caused a financial crisis for the city. Much of the waterfront land was contaminated from years of steel production, and concerns about pollution have hindered certain kinds of recreational development.  Two renewal programs, the Brownfields and Empire Zone programs have brought some cleanup efforts and new industry to Lackawanna by offering economic incentives, but concerns about pollution have also scared away some potential developers. Forty percent of the 114 companies who had signed onto the Empire Zone program dropped out.  Plans in the year 2000 for an expressway to connect downtown Buffalo with the industrial areas in Lackawanna fell through.  Moreover, after Bethlehem Steel declared bankruptcy, plans for an “industrial, commercial and recreational mecca” at the Lackawanna site stalled.  Although Lackawanna city officials have been working actively for nearly twenty years to negotiate a direction for the Bethlehem site, as of 2006, there was not a highly noticeable transformation. A driver on Route 5, which parallels the old Bethlehem Steel complex, sees more abandoned buildings than evidence of new industry.





Please open November and December 2008 in the sidebar to the right for previous excerpts. You can read them in order, if you like. 


The preceding is an excerpt from the doctoral dissertation, Father Nelson H. Baker: The Practices of Making a Saint for Buffalo, NY, Heather A. Hartel (2006) [Copyright registration number TX0006385881 / 2006-08-18]. Footnotes are not included because of formatting problems, but may be viewed in the original document downloadable from here. 

Excerpt 1: Father Baker's cause in context with Bethlehem Steel

 While the Our Lady of Victory Homes of Charity and parish retained its vitality by responding to changing public needs, Lackawanna’s steel industry began to decline in the early 1970s. At this time, the greater Buffalo area was in the beginning stages of transforming into a post-industrial urban region characterized by economic stagnation and a declining population. Scholars have pointed to circumstances such as the gradual withdrawal of industry following World War II, ill-conceived urban renewal programs of the 1950s, ineffective city planning, and insufficient mass transit systems as contributing factors to Buffalo’s decline.  A dramatic reduction of the number of industrial jobs in the area caused a population exodus. Buffalo’s 1970 population of 462,768 decreased to 292, 648 in thirty years, and by 2000, Erie County had lost 163,226 people, dropping its population to under one million.  At the height of its operations during the 40s and 50s, Bethlehem Steel had employed some 20-22,000 workers, more than Lackawanna’s 2000 census total of 19,045.  The Bethlehem Steel plant closings in Lackawanna are emblematic of the greater Buffalo area’s transformation and demonstrate the economic and emotional impact that industrial withdrawal can have on a city.

Between 1946 and 1962, Bethlehem Steel’s business was booming, but certain conditions developed during this time to set the stage for downgrades in Lackawanna. The company built a new plant at Burns Harbour near Chicago and began to invest much of its capital there.  In addition, the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1958 and improvements to the Welland Canal, which connects Lakes Erie and Ontario, created a shipping route that bypassed Buffalo’s harbor, effectively making its location unfavorable for industry. In 1970, Bethlehem Steel recognized problems with the Lackawanna plant, but took over a decade to close most of its operations.



Please open Nov & Dec 2008, Jan & Feb 2009 in the sidebar to the right for previous excerpts. You can read them in order, if you like. 


The preceding is an excerpt from the doctoral dissertation, Father Nelson H. Baker: The Practices of Making a Saint for Buffalo, NY, Heather A. Hartel (2006) [Copyright registration number TX0006385881 / 2006-08-18], p. 56-57.  Footnotes are not included because of formatting problems, but may be viewed in the original document downloadable from here. 


Buffalo 

Excerpt 2: History of the Our Lady of Victory Homes of Charity

In 1949, Bishop John O’Hara released Geary and split responsibility for the Institutes between two pastors, Maguire and Reverend Joseph McPherson.  Maguire was responsible for the Our Lady of Victory parish and shrine, and McPherson, who had been a pallbearer for Baker’s casket, became general manager of the Our Lady of Victory Institutes.  Over the next dozen years, the Institutes continued to expand and adapt their services to the community’s changing needs. The infant home was completely remodeled and two new wings were added to the hospital, including the 1960 Bethlehem-Taylor wing which, using a fund provided by Bethlehem Steel, provided care for steel workers after the Moses Taylor hospital closed in 1953.  In addition, the hospital’s nurses’ training program became affiliated with D’Youville college.  With little need for orphan care in the 1950s, McPherson completely phased out the orphanage and reformatory programs and turned a wing of the protectory building into Baker Victory High School in 1953, which was staffed by the Holy Cross Fathers at first, and later by the Franciscans.  He also decided to close the Institutes’ printing facilities and use outside contractors to publish the Victorian. 

In addition, McPherson was responsible for two particularly significant changes at the Institutes. To continue the tradition of caring for troubled youth, he started the Baker Hall program in 1956 which provided residential care for emotionally troubled boys throughout western New York, aged 10-17, who were referred by family courts and social agencies, “without regard to race, color, religion or national origin.”  It originally operated out of the orphanage, but moved in 1962 to a series of four cottages built on the Martin Road land that had been the Institutes’ farm.  Another important change McPherson proposed was to demolish St. John’s Protectory, arguing that this was necessary to save on maintenance costs and make room for other needed facilities. He was met with initial resistance from the diocese, but successfully demonstrated the benefits of removing the dilapidated building.  The huge protectory was razed in 1962 to make room for a high school, rectory and parking lot. By 1970, the primary services available at OLV were the infant home, hospital, and the Baker Hall program. Moreover, the parish ran a diocesan grade and high school, and the basilica remained a national tourist and pilgrimage attraction.

Please open November and December 2008 in the sidebar to the right for previous excerpts. You can read them in order, if you like. 


The preceding is an excerpt from the doctoral dissertation, Father Nelson H. Baker: The Practices of Making a Saint for Buffalo, NY, Heather A. Hartel (2006) [Copyright registration number TX0006385881 / 2006-08-18], p. 53-55.  Footnotes are not included because of formatting problems, but may be viewed in the original document downloadable from here. 


Buffalo 

Excerpt 1: History of the Our Lady of Victory Homes of Charity

(a.k.a Father Baker's)

During his life, Baker created an extensive organization that promoted both charitable works and devotional Catholicism. In the ten years after his death, the Institutes’ charitable services underwent a period of substantial reorganization. Baker’s first successor was Reverend Joseph E. Maguire who, according to one former Brother of the Holy Infancy, was “not a businessman” and seemed “out of his element” at the Institutes.  Maguire, with the assistance of business manager, Irving E. Geary, oversaw a decrease in the number of orphans at the homes and a restructuring of the Victorian magazine’s staff. 

With the rise of foster care in New York State, the population of boys at the homes decreased dramatically. St. Joseph’s continued to care for 80-110 orphans throughout the 1940s, but in 1939, most of the boys were removed from the protectory and given to state agencies or sent back to their own states or homes.  All of the trade school’s departments closed except the laundry and printing shops, and most of the existing thirty-eight Brothers of the Holy Infancy left to join other orders or the secular world.  With few boys left to train and no Brothers to run the printing department, its operations were turned over to a hired lay staff.  Robert K. Doran, an important promoter of Father Baker’s sainthood, joined the staff of the Victorian magazine in 1939 and was its editor from 1943-1957. Under his editorship, the Victorian, which, by this time, had evolved from a boy’s paper into a family magazine, began to highlight and memorialize Baker. The Institutes also memorialized Baker in the basement of the basilica in 1941 when a replica of his living quarters opened in conjunction with a religious goods store. 

Please open 2008 in the sidebar to the right and look in November and December for previous excerpts. You can read them in order, if you like. 


The preceding is an excerpt from the doctoral dissertation, Father Nelson H. Baker: The Practices of Making a Saint for Buffalo, NY, Heather A. Hartel (2006) [Copyright registration number TX0006385881 / 2006-08-18], p. 52-53.  Footnotes are not included because of formatting problems, but may be viewed in the original document downloadable from here. 


Buffalo 

Happy Birthday Father Baker

Baker was born in Buffalo on February 16, 1842. However, many of Baker’s biographers date his birth year as 1841 based on his baptismal records, and this is the date given by Victorian magazine. However, his military, ordination and chancery records indicate that he was born in 1842. Monsignor Walter Kern, who worked on historical documentation for Baker's cause for sainthood wrote about this oversight in one of his article for the Western New York Catholic in the 1980s.

It is interesting to note, too, that Baker’s death card, grave marker, and newer crypt in the basilica also bear the inaccurate 1841 date. Such is history.


Buffalo 

Shameless self promotion

A short article I wrote for Sightings about changes to the English translation of the Catholic Liturgy.

Excerpt 17: Father Baker in context

 In the years before his death on July 29th 1936, Baker continued to work on ideas to improve the Institutes, had become an important and influential religious figure in the diocese and was treated as a local celebrity. During the last years of his life, Baker had been planning services for “mentally defective” children and a strategy for suggesting that successful local businesses make an annual contribution to the Institutes.  He had functioned as Vicar General of the diocese since 1904 and was in close communication with many of the religious orders under its jurisdiction, providing spiritual guidance and advice in practical affairs. Rome had commended his religious leadership in 1923 by naming him Prothonotary Apostolic ad instar Participantium, an honor only five other clergymen in the United States had at the time.  During the early 1930s, he was a spokesperson for Catholic Charities on the radio.  Baker had also been one of the eight original incorporators of Catholic Charities in Buffalo.  Furthermore, the managers of the Catholic Charities appeal distributed small photos of Baker to Catholic homes in the diocese during the 1934 campaign, which suggests that he was a local Catholic celebrity.  Baker also received recognition from Rome when Pius XI sent an apostolic benediction on the 50th anniversary of his ordination in 1926.  During his final illness, he received another apostolic benediction from the pope via telegraph. 

Baker’s funeral was front page news for all of the major newspapers in Buffalo. Articles reported that the streets around the basilica were jammed with people waiting to view his body and referred to him as the “Padre of the poor” and the “Apostle of Charity.”  Evidence from these reports indicate that the loss of Baker’s respected and loved persona and community leadership was a highly charged emotional event for many residents of Lackawanna and Buffalo. One person recalls the “hushed atmosphere of sadness and awe” at the funeral.  Another remembers the sadness and grief in her home when Baker died and how her mother, who was seven months pregnant, stood in line for hours to view his body.  Several people waiting in line to see Baker’s body fainted from the heat.  Baker’s will indicates that he had no personal bank accounts or debts, that no one was financially indebted to him, and that he owned few personal belongings at the time of his death.  The parish buried him in the Holy Cross cemetery next to his parents. Baker’s coffin was covered with concrete to protect the grave and discourage relic seekers.

Please open November and December 2008 in the sidebar to the right for previous excerpts. You can read them in order, if you like. 


The preceding is an excerpt from the doctoral dissertation, Father Nelson H. Baker: The Practices of Making a Saint for Buffalo, NY, Heather A. Hartel (2006) [Copyright registration number TX0006385881 / 2006-08-18], p. 50-52.  Footnotes are not included because of formatting problems, but may be viewed in the original document downloadable from here. 


Buffalo 

Cathlolictv.com takes a visit to OLV

http://www.catholictv.org/shows/default.aspx?seriesID=21&videoID=244

Excerpt 16: Father Baker in context

Another service the Institutes provided was an apostolate to the African-American community. The 1930 Lackawanna census indicates that there were 2,051 African-Americans in Lackawanna, many of whom had been brought into the area by the steel company as workers or strikebreakers.  The Institutes had long provided services to children of African descent. One visitor’s observations of the African-American babies crowing “as joyously as the white” and the integrated washrooms in the orphanage inspired him to call Baker a “pioneer in interracial relations.”  In 1931, some of the unemployed Lackawanna residents of African descent who had been eating meals at OLV expressed their desire to join the Catholic church. By early 1932, Baker was providing daily religious instruction to about forty African-Americans. Because of his advanced age and many other duties, he soon enlisted the help of Reverend Thomas Galvin, a Redemptorist priest who had been an orphan at St. Joseph’s during its early years, and Margaret Bernardo, a woman of African descent from Cuba for whom Baker provided housing in exchange for her assistance. 

Baker and Galvin’s missionary efforts were not without resistance from those within the parish in the form of what Galvin described as a “whispering campaign of persecution.”  Also, local police began to arrest the program’s students and charge them with vagrancy instead of leaving them alone as they had previously done. Baker’s response to this was to examine the legal possibilities for prosecuting the city for unfair treatment by writing to a lawyer friend for advice and to provide his African-American converts with housing free of charge to prevent them from being kicked out of the city under vagrancy laws.  Galvin’s report of the apostolate expresses baffled amusement when his students, in their enthusiasm, put holy water in their coffee or wore rosary beads as necklaces or watch chains, “not done through superstition, but from ardent piety and devotion.” However, he tactfully refocuses on the success of his corrective measures and the joy of the converts.  By the end of 1932, the “Our Lady of Victory Colored Mission Society” saw a total of 340 converts, which included “two Mohammedens” from Calcutta.  Baker expressed great pleasure in the success of this work in reports to friends and the local Carmelites, and the apostolate in Lackawanna influenced additional missionary efforts with Buffalo’s African-American population during the mid 1930s. 




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The preceding is an excerpt from the doctoral dissertation, Father Nelson H. Baker: The Practices of Making a Saint for Buffalo, NY, Heather A. Hartel (2006) [Copyright registration number TX0006385881 / 2006-08-18], p. 47-50.  Footnotes are not included because of formatting problems, but may be viewed in the original document downloadable from here. 

Buffalo 

Excerpt 15: Father Baker in context

Under Baker’s direction, the OLV parish also gained local significance for helping spread Catholicism and providing social and community services, particularly in the 1920s and 30s. In 1921, a free Our Lady of Victory high school adjoining the basilica site opened in a “fine new building…constructed of red brick with grey stone trimming.”  Baker started the Our Lady of Victory mission church on Abbot Road to serve Italian and Polish Catholics in the area and staffed it with Brothers of the Holy Infancy. After a hurricane destroyed the mission building, he raised funds to replace it, establishing the Our Lady of the Sacred Heart parish in 1929 and donating a statue of OLV for the niche above the door.  In the early 1930’s, the Our Lady of Victory Mission School opened on Ridge Road across the street from the fire hall on the “Steel City side of Lackawanna;” this school was staffed by Felician nuns and provided Catholic education for minorities and immigrant children.  Also, Baker aided the Ladies Aid Society in establishing a boarding home for girls on Jersey Street in Buffalo to help “have as many protected from the evils of bad boarding houses as possible.”  During the depression when many of Lackawanna’s residents were unemployed, the Institutes donated over $9,000 in cash to the poor, spent over $8,000 on “shoes and mending” for the unemployed, and served 450,333 meals to unemployed men at the Institutes and the Working Boys Home, including “white people, Negroes, Indians, French, Polish, Italians, Hungarians, Arabians, unemployed, vagrants commonly called ‘tramps’ or ‘hoboes,’ Protestants and Catholics.”  The expenses of these efforts were so great that Baker asked for finances from Catholic Charities and appealed to Representative James M. Mead for help.  In addition, the orphanage accepted boys whose parents could not afford to care for them. One mother recalls bringing her three boys to St. Joseph’s in 1928 after her husband abandoned her and she had no one to care for her children while she worked. She paid a small monthly allowance to the Institutes, visited her children every week, and was able to remove them from the orphanage in 1934 after remarrying.

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The preceding is an excerpt from the doctoral dissertation, Father Nelson H. Baker: The Practices of Making a Saint for Buffalo, NY, Heather A. Hartel (2006) [Copyright registration number TX0006385881 / 2006-08-18], p. 47-48.  Footnotes are not included because of formatting problems, but may be viewed in the original document downloadable from here. 

Buffalo 

Excerpt 14: Father Baker in context

Being responsible for a large number of children created a considerable need for provisions, staff and medical care at the Institutes. Forty-five to eighty percent of the children were solely supported by the Institutes, and between 1912 and 1936, 800-2,000 children were being cared for at any one time. The children came from three Canadian provinces and thirty seven different states in the Union, including Indiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, Michigan, and West Virginia.  The Institutes ran a dairy and stock farm that provided vegetables, meat, eggs and milk until the 1940s, and the addition of larger laundry and educational facilities helped keep up with the orphans’ needs.  A nurse’s training program was started to help staff the infant home, and despite recovering from a fire at the protectory in 1908 and another in the orphanage in 1916, the Institutes expanded to include a maternity hospital by 1920.  This hospital, however, became a general care facility in 1921 after recent changes in state regulations required registered nurses to be trained in a general hospital setting.  By 1923, a three story residence was completed for the nursing students and the infant home was actively recruiting young women who wanted to specialize in child care.  Also, local girls volunteered to help feed the babies on “no school days.”

Amidst all of these improvements, the crown and glory of Baker’s expansions was the Our Lady of Victory Basilica, a white marble edifice built to replace St. Patrick’s church and consecrated in May of 1926.  Bethlehem Steel received money for aiding in its construction. The basilica’s opening was a significant event for the Buffalo region, and all of Buffalo’s major newspapers reported its dedication in feature articles. The basilica not only became a center for devotion and a pilgrimage site, but it also helped raise finances. Announcements in the Annals and Victorian for five yearly novenas said in the national shrine brought in offerings from across the United States.  By 1940, it was receiving over 250,000 visitors during the summer months.


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The preceding is an excerpt from the doctoral dissertation, Father Nelson H. Baker: The Practices of Making a Saint for Buffalo, NY, Heather A. Hartel (2006) [Copyright registration number TX0006385881 / 2006-08-18], p. 45-46.  Footnotes are not included because of formatting problems, but may be viewed in the original document downloadable from here. 

Buffalo 

Excerpt 13: Father Baker in context

As Lackawanna Steel brought urban development to Limestone Hill, the corner of Ridge Road and South Park avenue became one of the busiest intersections in the region, and the Our Lady of Victory Institutes at “Victorhill” or “Father Baker’s Corners” also continued to grow.  Baker began raising funds through The Annals in 1906 for an infant home to provide care for abandoned children under the age of five.  In 1908, he established the “Crib Donor’s Guild,” the Institutes’ longest running charity appeal, which asked donors to contribute twenty-five dollars to supply one infant with a crib and bedding.  The Institutes were already caring for a number of young children who were being housed by Amelia Mathieson in a home on Pearl Street in Buffalo.  In 1909, the Our Lady of Victory Infant Home opened, and when unwed mothers began coming to the home during its first year of operations, it became one of the only homes in the Northeast providing maternity services to these “unfortunate young women in poor circumstances,” most of whom left their newborns with the home and returned to their lives with their characters “preserved and untarnished.”  This program did not by any means promote single motherhood; rather it developed in response to negative cultural perceptions of pregnancy outside of wedlock and consciously tried to save lives by offering an alternative to illegal abortions.  The home advocated for unwed mothers by protecting their identity, even from the employees, and provided services to many free of charge.  By the 1920s, this promise of secrecy and affordable maternity care attracted women from at least thirteen different states as well as Canada and Germany, and the home was often “taxed to capacity.”  During the 1920s and 30s, significant friction developed between the Institutes and the State Board of Charities over the issues of overcrowding and the home’s refusal to release background information about the mothers.  While Baker worked to meet State requirements by expanding the home’s capacities and placing out infants to families, he remained adamant about protecting the mothers’ personal information.

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The preceding is an excerpt from the doctoral dissertation, Father Nelson H. Baker: The Practices of Making a Saint for Buffalo, NY, Heather A. Hartel (2006) [Copyright registration number TX0006385881 / 2006-08-18],  p. 44-45.  Footnotes are not included because of formatting problems, but may be viewed in the original document downloadable from here. 

Buffalo 

Excerpt 12: Father Baker in context

Religious institutions opened for the growing variety of populations as well. St. Patrick’s remained the only Catholic Church in western West Seneca until 1903 when Reverend John Ryan became pastor of the first Catholic church in the steel district, St. Charles’s, later known as the Queen of All Saints.  Additional Catholic parishes opened in the next thirty years including St. Barbara’s in 1904, St. Michael’s in 1910 and St. Hyacinth’s in 1911 for the Polish community; St. Anthony’s for Italian immigrants in 1917; Our Lady of the Sacred Heart of Jesus for Croatians in 1919; and the Holy Trinity Polish National Catholic Church for Poles from Scranton in 1929.  Catholicism appeared to have been the dominant faith in the area, but other groups were also present. Methodists, Presbyterians and Episcopalians all had churches in the area by 1910, a Serbian Orthodox church opened in 1917, and Bethel A.M.E. and Union Baptist churches opened for the African-American population in 1923. In addition, the First and Second Baptist churches opened during the 1920s, followed by Ebenezer and Mount Olive Baptist churches in 1935 and 1942, respectfully.

Once Lackawanna became urbanized, Lackawanna Steel directly impacted the city and its residents. What had once been a rural farming community was now encompassed by the “nerve racking sounds of mammoth auto-trucks and the wild, discordant tootings of auto claxons,” the “smoke and soot of a gigantic Steel Plant” and the “flare and flash of sulphuric flames from fiery furnaces.”  When a striker was killed during a 1919 steel workers’ strike, a funeral procession for the deceased turned into a strike rally as workers marched down Ridge Road to the Holy Cross cemetery.  In 1922, Charles Schwab and Bethlehem Steel purchased Lackawanna Steel and modernized much of its equipment.  Workers for Bethlehem Steel in the 1920s report being treated unfairly by foremen who played favorites, disciplined workers on a whim, and punished them for accidents if the mishaps were determined to be their fault.  In 1931, the plant was only employing thirty percent of its workforce and providing little support for the city’s financial base or the workers it had laid off.  Lackawanna had to seek public assistance to survive, and workers relied on local charity organizations, like the Our Lady of Victory Institutes and the Friendship House, for relief. By 1939, workers had established the Bethlehem Steel Workers Union which became associated with the United Steelworkers of America in 1942, just in time for increased World War II production.  Consequently, by the 1950s, Bethlehem steelworkers were well paid, respected members of the community, and Lackawanna was a thriving industrial city with more than half of its financial support coming from the plant.  

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The preceding is an excerpt from the doctoral dissertation, Father Nelson H. Baker: The Practices of Making a Saint for Buffalo, NY, Heather A. Hartel (2006) [Copyright registration number TX0006385881 / 2006-08-18], p. 42-44.  Footnotes are not included because of formatting problems, but may be viewed in the original document downloadable from here. 
Buffalo 

Excerpt 11: Father Baker in context

Before there were adequate housing and sewage facilities and organized municipal services, disorder characterized workers’ living conditions near the plant. A 1902 report indicates that an estimated 2-3,000 foreign born laborers from Buffalo hired to help build the plant were able to save on trolley fares by living in makeshift villages. Comprised mostly of Italians and Poles, these villages contained shelters built from cardboard, abandoned boxcars or scrap lumber, and their inhabitants cooked in the open and washed their clothes in Buffalo Creek. A number of saloons lined the entrance to the plant and “[caught] a certain number as surely as nets catch fish” on paydays, and crime in the area increased since the police force lacked manpower and encountered difficulties with language barriers when investigating incidents.  Buffalo papers perceived the steel plant region as a dangerous one, reporting that workers who were out at night felt it necessary to illegally carry firearms.  The fact that President McKinley’s assassin, Leon Czolgosz, had been a boarder on Center Street near Ridge Road where authorities found a gun, had not helped this reputation.  Moreover, sewage problems led to an outbreak of typhoid near the plant in 1903.

Despite these difficulties, conditions improved during the next two decades as the plant provided both housing and community services for its workers, municipal services became centralized with Lackawanna’s incorporation, and cultural centers and social institutions opened to meet the needs of the city’s various populations. The plant contracted two villages of new houses for which it provided police and fire protection.  In addition, it built the Moses Taylor Hospital to provide care for its injured workers since serious accidents and deaths were not uncommon during the plant’s early years.  Limestone Hill was incorporated as the city of Lackawanna in 1909, and a centralized administration helped establish the city’s identity.  In 1911, the local Presbyterian Mission Program established Friendship House, a social organization which helped steel workers, ran a nursery school, helped foreign born immigrants adjust, and aided needy families during depression.  In 1919, the Polish population began Dom Polski, a community center, located on Ridge Road in a building they purchased from the Lenham Mercantile Company.  In addition, Lackawanna held city events, such as the 1919 Labor Day international pageant to celebrate the proposed League of Nations.  However, the section of Lackawanna near the steel plant, “down over the bridge,” retained a bad reputation throughout the 20s and 30s.  Baker even expressed disgust and disappointment about the “lawlessness and crime” in the district.

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The preceding is an excerpt from the doctoral dissertation, Father Nelson H. Baker: The Practices of Making a Saint for Buffalo, NY, Heather A. Hartel (2006) [Copyright registration number TX0006385881 / 2006-08-18], p. 39-42.  Footnotes are not included because of formatting problems, but may be viewed in the original document downloadable from here. 

Buffalo