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Created/Published:
17 November 2005
1 hour 40 minutes
Preferred Citation:
Ireland House Oral History Collection, Archives of Irish America,
New York University
Biographical Note:
Monsignor Gerald J. Ryan, the sixth pastor of St. Luke’s Roman Catholic Church in New York’s South Bronx, was born on West 141st Street in Harlem, New York City in 1920. His mother, from Co. Limerick, worked as a cook before her marriage and his father, from Co. Tipperary, was a motorman on the IRT subway. The family moved to Pelham Bay in the east Bronx when Ryan, the fifth of six children, was two. There he attended P.S. 71 for three years (1925-1928), moving to the new parish school of Our Lady of the Assumption on Mahan Avenue to complete his elementary education in 1933. After graduating from Cathedral Preparatory High School and College, Ryan completed his education and seminary training at St. Joseph’s in Yonkers, New York.
Fr. Ryan was ordained on 27 January 1945 by Francis Cardinal Spellman. His first assignment was to St. Anthony of Padua, a primarily African-American parish located on East 166th Street in the Bronx, where he remained for the next twenty-one years. While there Fr. Ryan became interested in the civil rights movement. He was in Washington, D.C. for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech on 28 August 1963 and also marched with King on several occasions, including in the voting rights demonstration on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on 9 March 1965.(1)
In 1966, Fr. Ryan was appointed pastor of St. Luke’s in the South Bronx (623 East 138th Street), which is where he was serving at the time of this interview. He succeeded Msgr. Robert B. Mulcahey, who had been pastor of St. Luke’s since 1931.(2) By the late 1960s, the neighborhood that formed the parish of St. Luke’s, as well as other sections of the Bronx, was experiencing a major ethnic shift. The Irish and Italians who had been its principal residents were gradually replaced by Puerto Rican families. To make the necessary personal and professional adjustments, Fr. Ryan went to school to learn Spanish, and visited Spain and Puerto Rico. In the tough years of the 1970s, when the South Bronx was ravaged by drug addiction, crime, and decaying infrastructure, Fr. Ryan and dedicated parishioners renovated St. Luke’s for its 75th Anniversary in 1972 and converted the lower church into a desperately needed community center. He became a role model for local young people. “The young people, in turn, influenced Father Ryan; and, over time, his style of clothing, his long hair, his beard, reflected their styles, and became part of his St. Luke’s persona.”(3)
In October 1995, after fifty years in the priesthood, Gerald Ryan was made a monsignor by John Cardinal O’Connor and two years later presided over the centennial celebrations for St. Luke’s, which was serving 600 families and 400 school-age children by 1997. At the time of this interview, Msgr. Ryan was 85 and still overseeing a majority of the masses at St. Luke’s, in addition to leading Wednesday night “rap” sessions for troubled teens in the parish and practicing Tai Chi regularly. He is the longest serving pastor in the Archdiocese of New York.
Interviewers:
Natalie Rose [NR], Linda Dowling Almeida [LA]
Excerpt No. 1
Growing up in the Bronx
Disc 1, 1:03-3:23
Listen to Excerpt No. 1*
Transcription of Excerpt No. 1:
NR: Father, what was it like growing up in the Bronx?
GR: Excuse me? Oh, growing up in the Bronx. The family lived in Manhattan for two years after my birth and then we moved up to Pelham Bay in the Bronx in 1922. We had a house there — my father built his house — so we lived in the family home all my life. I still have it. It is in my name now because everybody in the family is dead.
NR: And, how do you think it is different from people growing up today in the Bronx?
GR: How is it different? Growing up in the Bronx in my day, well, Pelham Bay was farmland really. So it was like living in the country. We had a garden. We grew our own vegetables and had fruit trees. My father was a motorman on the IRT subway.(4) And my mother had been a cook before they got married so we were well fed. And, I started school in P.S. 71 and stayed there for three years, and then Our Lady of the Assumption parish built its own school and I started in Catholic school in grade four, and was graduated from there in 1933. Growing up, well, I had the usual experience of kids growing up in a countrified place. I had my special friends.
LA: Father, countrified? We don’t often think of that part of New York as the country.
GR: Well, this was back in the ‘20s. It was not developed yet at all. Now it is quite different.
Excerpt No. 2
Agitating for civil rights in Alabama
Disc 1, 44:20 – 48:53
Transcription of Excerpt No. 2:
GR: Then, after that, was the march on Selma and we went down there. The pastor of St. Raymond’s,(5) he heard that I was going and called me up and asked, ‘How many are going with you?’ and I suppose there might have been fifteen or twenty. He gave us $1,000 to help our expenses. Then when we got down there to Selma, we were in the Baptist church and — Martin Luther King [Jr.] addressed us and he told us how grateful he was for us being there. And then he asked if he could see all of the priests. It was a gathering for clergy, but then he wanted to talk to priests. We all went out of the church and met him outside. He was especially grateful to us that we were coming from all parts of the country to join him. He was a very dynamic man, you know, a man that was a leader. The next day we were supposed to march on Pettus Bridge and he did not have a permit and so the police forbid him to do it. He told us he was going to march anyway and whoever would join him please come. And we all did, not knowing what was going to happen — because there were the rednecks down there with their billys and rocks and whatever — but, I suppose, that is following the leader: he says go and you go. The next morning [9 March 1965], when we were all gathered and ready to go, word came through that the permit was issued. I suppose Washington called down and said, ‘Do that,’ because we were going to be on TV and, if they attacked us, it would be all over the country. So, going over the bridge, it was an experience — the southerners were cursing us out and shaking their fists.
LA: So, they were lined on either side?
GR: On both sides, yeah, shaking their fists at us and whatever.
LA: And you were marching with the people from your parish or was it just clergy?
GR: These were all clergy. The clergy from the New York diocese and from all the other places throughout the country.
LA: So, when he met with you, it was just clergy that he invited to join him?
GR: Yeah.
LA: Oh, so it wasn’t the people you traveled with?
GR: Right. Later on they had a march to Montgomery [Alabama] because there was some kind of fracas going on there. And so, many of us stayed behind and went to Montgomery [too].(6) We had that singer, that black singer that was so popular —
LA: Ray Charles?
GR: No.
LA: Man or woman?
GR: Man, a very handsome man. And a singer.
LA: Harry Belafonte?
GR: Harry Belafonte! Yeah, he was with us. And they were lined up, the southerners were lined up in the streets of Montgomery and shouting curses at us and whatever and then they spotted Harry — these would be the teenagers, the girls — and then they started yelling out, “Harry, Harry!” It was a contradiction.
Excerpt No. 3
Daily duties at St. Luke’s
Disc 1, 1:02:19 – 1:05:05
Transcription of Excerpt No. 3:
NR: This is a good time to talk about what a typical day for you would be like. From the time you get up until the time you go to bed?
GR: Yeah, it depends on the day. Wednesday for instance, well Wednesday I had to do the two masses.
LA: So that’s 7:15 a.m. and 8:45 a.m.?
GR: 8:45 a.m. It so happened —
LA: I am sorry, what time do you get up?
GR: Around 6 a.m. It so happened that a funeral was there. And I said, ‘No, there’s no funeral.’ And so Felix says, ‘Yeah, there’s a funeral.’ So I went in and, sure enough, the girl that was at the [rectory] desk on Saturday — Ortiz (7) called in for a funeral and she never let anybody know.
NR: Oh no.
LA: So, what time was that?
GR: This was like 10 a.m. So it was necessary to do the funeral after two masses.
NR: Right.
GR: Then I might go over to the school and talk to the kids. We are having a raffle over there for Christmas. And so I told them that I want them to sell all of the chance books — and I want everybody to sell five chance books — try to whip up some enthusiasm! Then, we’d have some lunch. I might do Tai Chi (8) after lunch. We have a Tai Chi mistress: Ellen, her name is. She comes from the [Greenwich] Village here [Glucksman Ireland House is in New York City’s Greenwich Village.]
LA: And she goes all the way up there to run the class?
GR: She comes up and [Fr.] John Grange, who’s the pastor of St. Jerome’s,(9) comes over and we go out in the yard and we do our Tai Chi.
NR: Just you? Is there anyone else?
GR: Just John and I now. Sometimes a few others join us. We’ve had as many as four do the Tai Chi. Ellen is so resourceful and so patient. She really knows that inside out and upside down. The things she can do with her body, and it’s all balance, and it’s beautiful to watch her.
Excerpt No. 4
Assimilation
Disc 2,13:35 – 16:43
Transcription of Excerpt No. 4:
NR: Father, do you consider yourself Irish American?
GR: Well, that‘s what I am, I suppose. My mother used to tell us, you know, if anybody asks you what is your nationality, you are American. She wasn’t comfortable with saying we were Irish. No, we were American. I don’t think she ever missed Ireland. I don’t think she did.
LA: Really? Too hard a life, or she had a good life in America?
GR: Well, I suppose she loved America. She came from a very poor family in Limerick. You know, like that somebody’s ashes —
LA: Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt.(10)
GR: — that very, very poor part of Ireland — that’s where she grew up.
LA: Was she on a farm, or was she in the city?
GR: Yeah, a kind of a small of farm, they did have their own land. Her father was kind of a gentleman and he had a gun, and he used to go off shooting. Here he had all these children to take care of and he would be out shooting somewhere. I don’t think he took very good care of the farm and his family.
LA: Did he come from money and lose it? I mean, that is really unusual.
GR: Did he what?
LA: It sounds like he had sort of class aspirations, that he felt himself to be a gentleman.
GR: He might have. I don’t know. I was often fascinated by that too but she didn’t talk that much about him. But she was very fond of him and he was fond of her— she used to say, “The stroke of hair on St. Bridget.” But that is unusual. But he was kind of a gentleman, like a Mr. Micawber with all the children.(11)
LA: That’s right.
GR: And so maybe she just associated Ireland with poverty and she didn’t want to go back. And she escaped as soon as she could. She did go back in ‘33 for a visit and that was the only time. I wanted her to come back with me after I was ordained — go over and visit the folks. No, she wouldn’t fly. She was even afraid to sail. She was afraid of ships, but flying — she wouldn’t do anything. It was too bad, because she could have gone back quite a few times if she wanted to.
Footnotes:
(1) This was two days after “Bloody Sunday,” when Alabama state troopers and sheriffs fired on civil rights marchers to stop them from crossing the Pettus Bridge.
(2) For years the religious and spiritual needs of Mary Mallon were served by the priests of St. Luke’s and she was buried from there on 12 November 1938. “Typhoid Mary Buried,” New York Times, 13 November 1938, p. 30.
(3) Roland Chapdelaine, The History of St. Luke’s Parish, 1897-1997: A Century of Service to the People of Mott Haven (Bronx, NY: St. Luke’s Roman Catholic Church, 1997).
(4) The IRT subway service to Pelham Bay in the east Bronx commenced in December 1920 and Ryan’s father probably moved the family to the area for convenience. Motormen typically lived near the end of their day’s work. Marion R. Casey, “’From the East Side to the Seaside’: Irish Americans on the Move in New York City” in Ronald H. Bayor and Timothy J. Meagher, eds. The New York Irish (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 403.
(5) St. Raymond’s Roman Catholic Church at Castle Hill & Tremont Avenues is in the Parkchester section of the Bronx.
(6) The Montgomery, Alabama civil rights march took place on 24 March 1965.
(7) The Ortiz Funeral Home at 310 Willis Avenue in the Bronx.
(8) T'ai Chi Ch'uan is a soft Chinese martial art practiced for health and longevity.
(9) St. Jerome’s Roman Catholic Church is at East 138th Street and Alexander Avenue, about three blocks west of St. Luke’s.
(10) Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir (NY: Scribner’s, 1996).
(11) Wilkins Micawber is a fictional character in Charles Dicken’s novel David Copperfield (1850).
Photo Credits:
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