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“FATHER WILLIAM CUNNINGHAM” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Agriculture was published in the Senate section on pages S5304 on June 5, 1997.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
FATHER WILLIAM CUNNINGHAM
Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I rise today to pay my deepest respects to Father William Cunningham. Detroit lost one of its favorite sons on Monday, May 26, when Father Cunningham died following a 7-month battle with liver cancer.
His passing, and the loss we now face, brings us great sorrow. True heroes, after all, are never easily replaced. However, it also provides us a moment's pause to reflect upon and celebrate the extraordinary deeds of a man too humble to accept any congratulations while still in our midst.
Rarely do individuals, by the sheer force of the power of their vision, manage to alter the destiny of an entire city. Father Cunningham, without question, was one of these individuals. His commitment to Detroit, and to eradicating the problems that plagued it, was unwavering. Where others decried the insurmountable obstacles, Father Cunningham optimistically advocated solutions.
William Thomas Cunningham grew up in Detroit's Boston-Edison neighborhood. He attended Sacred Heart and St. John's Provincial Seminaries and was ordained into the priesthood in 1955.
Father Cunningham was teaching English at Sacred Heart Seminary when widespread rioting broke out in Detroit in the summer of 1967. Just a few short blocks from his classroom Detroit was being torn apart, both literally and figuratively.
In the aftermath of this deadly summer, Father Cunningham and Eleanor Josaitis, a Taylor, MI, housewife and mother, joined forces. Angered by what they felt was an inadequate response on the part of the religious, academic, industrial, and government establishments, Cunningham and Josaitis formed a civil rights organization, Focus:HOPE, to work to ensure the summer of 1968 was a peaceful one.
In an effort to promote racial harmony, Cunningham and Josaitis began gathering and distributing food and clothing to riot victims. In the process of doing so, Cunningham learned of Agriculture Department warehouses stocked with food supplies. With the missionary's zeal and powers of persuasion that made him such an effective public servant, Cunningham convinced the USDA to donate these large stockpiles for assistance to the inner city poor.
Today, Focus:HOPE feeds 51,000 people a month. However, Focus:HOPE has evolved and grown into so much more than just an organization that feeds the hungry.
Father Cunningham was driven by the belief that the only thing separating the poor and unemployed in downtown Detroit from their better off counterparts in the surrounding suburbs was a lack of job training and education. So Focus:HOPE set out to make people more employable.
Two decades later, on a forty acre industrial and educational complex on Oakman Boulevard in Detroit, Focus:HOPE runs myriad highly successful enterprises. The Center for Advanced Technologies trains 85 people to graduate with bachelor's degrees accredited by Wayne State University. The Machinist Training Institute offers year-round classes and boasts of a 100-percent graduation and placement rate. Yet another program is Fast-Track, a training course to teach prospective job applicants the necessary math and communications skills to be competitive. Focus:HOPE also runs two for-profit auto parts manufacturing firms, High-Quality and Tec Express, not to mention a child care center, a communications center and a food distribution center.
Consider the following statistics as a measure of the success of Father Cunningham's work. At the time of its conception in 1968, Focus:HOPE had a budget of about $12,000. In 1996, that budget had grown to $76 million. Focus:HOPE currently employs over 800 people and has 45,000 volunteers.
Last October, Father Cunningham was diagnosed with cancer. He certainly wouldn't have been faulted had he chose to rest and enjoy his final days. Yet, as he had done his entire life, Father Cunningham chose to fight on. At the same time he battled his cancer, he continued to press forward with his latest project. In the days ahead, Focus:HOPE will open Tech Villas, an apartment complex of over 100 units, will be constructed within an empty former Michigan Yellow Pages building.
Father Cunningham was a man who had received the praise of presidents, heads of industry, and an entire city grateful for his vision. In the end, however, Father Cunningham still thought of himself as a simple parish priest, no more important than those he served.
It may be years before Detroit sees the likes of another leader as dynamic and committed as was Father Cunningham. No amount of tribute can ever begin to sufficiently repay our debt to Father Cunningham and Eleanor Josaitis, who will carry on their work.
Mr. President, on behalf of all my colleagues in the Senate and all those who live in my State of Michigan, I bid a fond farewell to Father William Cunningham. While he may no longer be with us, his legacy lives on in the institution he built, in the city he helped save, and in the countless lives he touched. We truly were blessed by his presence.
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