June Appeal

Dear Friends,

Thirty years ago this week, if you’re reading this letter the first week of June, Kate and I met with Larry Purcell and Jan Johanson of the Redwood City Catholic Worker to discuss the possibility of their assisting us with starting a new Catholic Worker house in San Mateo County.

A month or so beforehand, Kate had been in the office of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker, where we were both living, looking through a basket filled with newsletters from various Catholic Worker houses. In perusing the letters, she read a recent letter from the Redwood City Catholic Worker in which they spoke of having raised money to help a young couple start their own Catholic Worker house. They said they had the money, but we’re just looking for the right people to start the work.

This caught Kate’s attention. While we were both members of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker community and wanted to stay as Catholic Workers, we were interested in starting our own house. Kate and I were about to get married and were eager to have children. In her wisdom, Kate realized that it is much easier to raise children in a Catholic Worker House when it’s your house and you can set the parameters of work in a way that enables a sane and healthy family life.

So, a few weeks later, while on our honeymoon in the Bay Area, we met with Larry and Jan to discuss what they had in mind and to see if that would mesh with what we wanted to do. We were not ten minutes into the conversation when Jan said to Larry, “Here are the people we’ve been waiting for.” Kate and I, understandably, we’re a bit startled.

What they offered us was extravagant in its generosity and trust. They would loan us money to purchase a house from which to operate a Catholic Worker (said loan would be forgiven if we stayed at the work for five years), would introduce us to people who could be helpful to us in starting our work, would allow us use of their mailing list for our first mailing, and they would be a loving supporting presence to us. All they asked is that we do the work in San Mateo County as that was where they had raised the money. How could we say no to that? We didn’t. We quickly said yes and started to work on the details of when we would move up.

In late November 1995 we left the Los Angeles Catholic Worker, moved into a garage apartment the Redwood City Catholic Worker provided for us, searched for and found a house in San Bruno, and in February of 1996 moved into the house on 2nd Ave. Twenty-nine years later, the work of Catholic Worker Hospitality House is still going strong, although be it with ups and downs and changes over the years.

Larry and Jan took a huge leap of faith in us and we took a leap of faith that the community would support this work. Kate went on to other work, working in the law and policy, helping those in need, but still remaining supportive and involved, and I have continued to put in a lot of work over the years in keeping it going, but it has been through the faithful generosity of hundreds of people in our community and throughout the country who provided emotional, financial, and material support to our work of feeding, sheltering, and housing those in need, to keep it going.

We realize the importance of our commitment which has provided stability and continuity to the work, but without your partnership we would not have been able to continue our basic work, much less expand into the various housing projects we operate today. As always, we give a heartfelt thanks to your past generosity and hope that you will continue helping us serve those in need.

In Christ’s Peace,

Peter Stiehler
For all of us at
Catholic Worker
Hospitality House