Fr. Ed at Macchu Picchu. He gave me permission to use this photo.
When I last met with Fr. Ed Cleary, professor of political science at Providence College, I promised him I would one day write a blog about him on this website. I had no idea that the blog post would end up being a eulogy. Fr. Ed died suddenly, just before Thanksgiving, at the age of eighty-two.
Funny how people somehow assumed Fr. Ed would go on forever, despite his age and the fact that he suffered a stroke some eight years ago. “Even though crippled by the stroke,” his Providence College colleague and fellow Dominican Fr. Thomas McCreesh, OP, said, “he struggled bravely on and one would never have thought his struggle would have ended so soon.” Indeed, he seemed unstoppable. When I visited Providence in July 2010 he didn’t have time to meet me—he was fighting a stomach bug so that he could leave later that afternoon on a trip to the Adirondacks. He loved to ride the Lake Champlain ferry and always took a book of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poems along to read on that leg of what must have been a fairly regular journey.
Another Dominican colleague, Fr. John Vidmar, OP, recalls that not even last winter’s severe weather kept Fr. Ed indoors: “Last winter, he was getting into his car with a foot of snow on the ground, and I told him not to go. Whatever it was, even if a doctor’s appointment, it could wait. Someone else could drive him. But he was fiercely independent and equally devoted to the people of South America. They lost a friend.”
Latin America—its peoples, culture, religion—was Fr. Ed’s life. He knew Latin America as a social scientist and loved it as a Dominican missionary. He directed Providence College’s Latin American Studies program, and his list of publications on the subject is impressive. They include
Conversion of a Continent: Contemporary Religious Change in Latin America, coauthored with Timothy J. Steigenga, and
The Struggle for Human Rights in Latin America. I had the privilege (and the challenge—Ed sometimes took a bit of persuading) of editing one of his more recent books,
How Latin America Saved the Soul of the Catholic Church. At the time of his passing he was working on a monumental project for Oxford University Press and had just about completed the editing of a multiauthor work for Paulist Press. Typically, Fr. Ed was found by a colleague at his desk, hard at work.
Fr. Ed’s latest actual publication was The Rise of Charismatic Catholicism in Latin America. At that last meeting I had with him, back in April, I had no idea that he had this book about to come out; else I’d have been really nervous. For most of our conversation (after he noted that I was wearing my “New England outfit”—something nautically-themed), he grilled me on precisely this topic. I simply extrapolated what I know on the Charismatic movement in the USA and drew comparisons and contrasts. That met with his approval, much to my relief; sometimes crusty and always sharp as a tack, Fr. Ed could keep you on your toes.
When I last spoke with Fr. Ed a couple of months ago, he sounded amazingly chipper and was especially pleased about the arrival at Providence College of Fr. David Orique, OP, whom he had chosen to succeed him. Said Fr. McCreesh, “Fr. Ed was a great example of someone who never looked back; he accepted his physical challenge and just kept on working and writing. May he rest in peace!”
They didn’t name the hurricanes back then, so this one is known as the Great Hurricane of 1938. Indeed it was “great” with respect to its unbelievable intensity and, consequently, the extent of the damage it wreaked and the tool on human lives on Long Island and in New England.
No one expected it to veer back toward land the way it did–that is, no one except one young and very bright meteorologist named Charles Pierce, who tried desperately to warn his colleagues in the U.S. Weather Bureau. Because of his relative inexperience, no one believed him.
As the storm barrelled its inexorable way up the coast, it made landfall at Patchogue, Long Island, on September 21 before continuing to New England, where it became the worst weather disaster ever to strike that region. Nearly 700 lives were lost, over 500 in Rhode Island alone. Property damage was devastating, and geographically, the storm changed forever many coastal features of Long Island and New England. It created the Shinnecock Inlet in Easten Long Island, virtually wiped Napatree Point, near Westerly, Rhode Island, off the map, blew down billions (billions, yes) of trees and reduced thousands of homes to matchsticks. Even Providence, which isn’t near the coast, found itself under 17 feet of water in some places.
A few months ago I went on the Lighthouse Cruise out of Quonset. As we circled round what’s left of Whale Rock Light, the guide told the story of that fateful day as it affected this lighthouse. Even the solid cast iron of which the tower was built, and its concrete, reinforced steel base, were no match for the fury of the storm. It all plunged into the sea and the lighthouse keeper went with it, to his death. Here is a photo of what remains of Whale Rock Light.
By far the best book about the Great Hurricane of 1938 is Sudden Sea by R.A. Scotti. Scotti, like me, is too young to have lived at the time of this hurricane, but it has seeped into our bones, into our psyches, because our families were affected and have told the tales many times over–hers in Rhode Island, mine on a Long Island barrier beach. A gifted journalist and novelist, Scotti narrates the larger picture but also zooms in on some individual stories that tellingly illustrate the wrath of this storm and the desperation of people trying to save themselves from it. In particular, she focuses on Jamestown, Rhode Island, where nearly an entire school bus load of children lost their lives. Their driver, Norm Caswell, couldn’t know that the surge of the “sudden sea” would overwhelm him and his charges long before he could ever hope to deposit the children safely at their homes. Some of those children lived at Beavertail, where the lighthouse (the above photo) sustained significant damage.
I’m writing this a few short weeks after Hurricane Irene, another storm that made its way to places where hurricanes of this strength aren’t “supposed” to happen. Parts of the Hudson Valley will never be the same. But the resilience of the people is amazing. New England rebuilt itself; now Jamestown, once isolated from the mainland and accessible only by boat, is connected to South County by the Jamestown-Verrazzano Bridge and to Aquidneck Island by the stunningly beautiful and breathtaking (when you drive over it) Claiborne Pell Bridge. People in the Western Catskills towns devastated a few weeks ago are pulling themselves together, pitching in to help themselves and one another, and declaring, “We will rise again.” That Yankee spirit.
Sakonnet Light, April 2010. Winds whip up the waters at Sakonnet Point, demonstrating why the Lighthouse is in constant need of upkeep.
You can even see her proudly guarding the entrance to the Sakonnet River across the Rhode Island Sound at Sachuest Point, this lighthouse with an amazing history. It began in 1882, when Congress approved an allocation of $20,000 for a lighthouse to be built at this spot, on Little Cormorant Rock. Two years later, the brand new Sakonnet Lighthouse began operation. In her more than 125 years the Sakonnet Lighthouse has literally weathered many storms: in 1938 her tower was completely buried by the Great Hurricane that devastated so much of Rhode Island, and from Hurricane Carol in 1954 she sustained damage so severe that she was decommissioned and the ownership transferred from the U.S. Coastguard to the Town of Little Compton, off whose shores she stands.
In 1961 Sakonnet Lighthouse was purchased by Carl Haffenreffer, president of Narragansett Brewing, and 24 years later Mr. Haffenreffer transferred the ownership to the newly-formed Friends of Sakonnet Lighthouse, Inc. (FOSLH), a nonprofit group “constituted for the exclusive public purpose of restoring, maintaining and conserving the Sakonnet Lighthouse in perpetuity for the benefit of the public and to do all things necessary to accomplish the same.”
FOSLH had their work cut out for them, and they have consistently done an admirable job in maintaining the Lighthouse. In 1992, having raised approximately $100,000, they partially repaired her and established a trust at the Rhode Island Fund for her ongoing maintenance. It soon became clear that major renovations would be needed, however, and FOSLH set about raising funds for the task, which included a grant of $844,323 from the Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT) and, during the Lighthouse’s 125th anniversary year (2009), an additional $185,000 was raised to make up what would be needed according to the budgetary engineering estimate.
In February 2010 RIDOT approved the Plans, Specifications, and Estimate for the rehabilitation of Sakonnet Lighthouse, and after putting the project out to bid, FOSLH asked that RIDOT award the project to Joseph Gnazzo Co., Inc. of Union, Connecticut. The Joseph Gnazzo Company was approved, and preparations for the renovation of the Sakonnet Lighthouse began in June 2010. The work itself began in earnest in August 2010, with a hiatus for the winter starting in December of that year. Here you can visit Gnazzo’s website to see the actual work in progress.
So it was that when I drove down to the tip of Sakonnet to photograph the Lighthouse in April of
When I visited in April 2011, Sakonnet Lighthouse was all decked out in her scaffolding, courtesy of the Gnazzo Company.
this year, lo and behold! She was all decked out in scaffolding. Here you see two of my photos of her – one taken last April before operations began, and one taken this April with work in progress. I look forward to being able to photograph her again once the renovation work is completed. Completion is scheduled to take place by the end of 2011.
Once the Joseph Gnazzo Company has finished its renovation, FOSLH’s funds will be seriously depleted, leaving not much for the inevitable costs of ongoing maintenance of the Sakonnet Lighthouse. Thus FOSLH’s fundraising work is never done. If you would like to contribute to the upkeep of this beautiful lighthouse, you can mail a tax-deductible gift (please write “Restoration Fund” on your check) to:
Friends of Sakonnet Lighthouse, Inc., P.O. Box 154, Little Compton, RI 02837
It’s so close to the more famous Newport that it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins–but Middletown offers nice places to stay, good restaurants, shopping (love that Barnes and Noble on the main road!), and a wealth of opportunities for enjoying the outdoors–yes, even in winter, for those who don’t mind the cold and love trudging through snow!
And so off I went, for a long weekend in mid-January, to revel in the quiet and the faded winter light at the Sachuest National Wildlife Refuge (one of five NWRs in the Ocean State), to enjoy the requisite seafood dinner at Anthony’s Seafood Restaurant, and of course, to take a detour along Newport’s Scenic Coastal Road for a winter visit to Castle Hill. The Seaview Inn provided friendly, comfortable accommodations as well as a stunning view from the balcony. You can see clear to the ocean here–definitely an added attraction for those of us who prefer wide open spaces.
Surprises await those intrepid enough to venture out to Sachuest very early on a frigid winter morning, for that’s when you may be fortunate enough to see deer who may otherwise remain hidden.
Sure enough, as I approached Sachuest Point I spied several of them in the distance. Most of them scattered into the bushes when they saw me coming, but two of them stayed to watch–from a safe distance and partially concealed behind the bare winter bushes–but then one scampered off while the other dashed to the top of a hill where it stood still and watched me intently for several minutes.
Never has an animal been so amazingly cooperative in providing me with an unpa
ralleled photo op. I fired off dozens of shots, all hand-held, for I was afraid that the motion of opening and setting up my tripod would frighten him off. Better to make do with what you have, in such circumstances, rather than risk getting nothing at all.
More on my Middletown trip later–meanwhile, here are more of my photos of the great Ocean State.
Welcome to Rhode-Island-Rocks.com! Here you’ll find interesting, useful, and just plain fun information about the Ocean State. Little Rhody may be the smallest of the fifty states (only 1,045 square miles of land area), but it’s big in history, fabulous scenery, and lots of great “happenings” the year round.
So, what is happening in Rhode Island? We’ll update this (and the other features) regularly, but let’s start by mentioning a couple of important anniversaries. One of them celebrates a place you’re certain to want to visit. Check out these milestones.
And be sure to check out Water Fire in Providence!
Rhode Island spots to visit. Did you know that the Ocean State has four vineyards, five National Wildlife Refuges, and 13 Audubon Wildlife Refuges (14 if you count one in Seekonk, MA, maintained by the Audubon Society of Rhode Island)? Not to mention Rhody’s state parks, museums, and churches (John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier were married in Newport). And lighthouses galore! Visit these featured Rhode Island spots.
Amazing Rhode Island facts. There’s a truly marvelous variety of things to be learned about Little Rhody, from little tidbits to fascinating historical tales. For example, did you know that this tiny gem of a state has over 400 miles of coastline? Not only the Atlantic Ocean but also the spectacularly beautiful Narragansett Bay accounts for this rugged coast—and for all those Rhode Island rocks! Learn more about Rhode Island.
Ocean State PhotoStore. Feast your eyes on the currently featured Rhode Island photographs! Learn where to see more and to buy your own prints and cards or to license the photos for stock use.
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