By Elinor J. Brecher and Luisa Yanez. ebrecher@herald.com.
Published Friday, December 21, 2001 in The
Miami Herald.
Monsignor Bryan O. Walsh, the Irish Catholic priest to whom more than 14,000
Cuban-born youngsters owe their American lives, died Thursday of complications
from heart surgery, 41 years almost to the day that he helped hatch the rescue
plan called Operation Pedro Pan.
During nearly a half-century as a priest, Walsh, who was 71, pastored
several South Florida parishes and ran Catholic Charities, the Archdiocese of
Miami's vast human-services network. Under his leadership, it grew from a
$100,000 operation with 11 staff members in 1955 to a small army of 840 working
with a $30 million budget.
Before retiring in 1996, Walsh became deeply involved in interfaith and
interracial dialogues in a community often torn by conflict. He was a respected
champion of immigrants' rights, called to testify before Congress on the
subject.
Those who worked with him on dozens of community boards and panels recalled
Walsh as a pillar of stability in turbulent times: wise, resolute, visionary,
compassionate, and boundlessly tolerant.
"This good Irish missionary priest imitated Jesus' own option for the
poor, the needy and the outcast,'' said Miami Archbishop John C. Favalora. "Monsignor
was the recipient of so many awards in this life, surely now he enjoys the
longed-for quest of his life: to be with God forever.''
SURROGATE FATHER
Walsh is best known as a surrogate father to thousands of children whose
anxious parents spirited them out of Cuba at the dawn of the Castro regime. He
raised many as his own, later performing their marriages and baptizing their
children and grandchildren.
Two of the doctors who treated him at Mercy Hospital, where he died at noon
of cardiac arrest, were Pedro Pan children.
A pilot in his younger days, the strapping, six-foot-four Walsh remained an
avid sailor, cyclist and traveler who seemed hale and fit even as he underwent
surgery last week to correct a lifelong heart defect.
He received a pacemaker after an episode of difficult breathing, according
to Bishop Thomas Wenski, his successor at the helm of Catholic Charities. When
doctors determined that the pacemaker wasn't sufficient, they opted to replace
two heart valves.
"He knew when the procedure was done he was at high risk,'' said
Wenski, among those at Walsh's side in his final moments. "The surgery was
successful but his heart couldn't take the strain. . . . He was serene at the
end. He was a man of great faith and he took on his passing as he took on life,
with faith and courage.''
Favalora prayed the rosary with Walsh Thursday morning and administered the
last rites of the Church.
GLOBAL RESPECT
"Few individuals ever achieve his leadership stature in the church and
in the state of Florida,'' the archbishop said. "He also enjoyed the
respect of the international community.''
He was "one of those people you think you'll have forever,'' said Pedro
Pan alumna Elly Chovel, a founder of Operation Pedro Pan Group, Inc., a charity
formed to honor Walsh by raising money and volunteering time for children's
services at Catholic Charities. ". . . For the 40th anniversary, he wanted
to put everything from Pedro Pan in order. We gave the archives to Barry
University.''
The chair for Immigration Studies at Barry was named for him earlier this
year.
Walsh had resisted taking medication for his heart condition, Chovel said.
"He told me, 'I would prefer to preserve the quality of my life. . . .
The Lord has given me a very good life and when the time comes, I will be ready
to go.' ''
'WHAT GOD WANTED'
Father Arthur Dennison of Broward's St. Andrew's Church, one of Walsh's
closest friends, said Walsh realized his vocation in high school.
"He always believed that's what God wanted him to do,'' said Dennison,
who accompanied Walsh on a trip up the Shannon River in Ireland last summer.
He attended seminary in Baltimore and was ordained for the Diocese of St.
Augustine in 1954.
Walsh was the last surviving member of a clandestine group that engineered
the scheme to slip more than 14,000 Cuban children out of Cuba and into the arms
of the Catholic Church in South Florida. The plan coalesced on Christmas Eve,
1960.
Walsh, with his heavy Irish brogue, was the mission's man in Miami.
Through him, the Catholic Church placed the children in foster care or
orphanages until their parents arrived. In some cases, that took years.
Walsh initially figured the operation would handle 25 children. Instead, it
became one of the largest operations of its kind in the United States.
"Pedro Pan was uncharted territory,'' noted Wenski. "When he
accepted that responsibility there was no guarantee that there would be a lot of
support.''
Indeed, Walsh told the Herald in November, when he was honored by Barry
University for his work, "there were times when I was ready to tear my hair
out. . . . It was just overwhelming. We always debated whether we were doing the
right thing, but we always came back to the same thing: How can we deny the
rights these parents had to seek freedom for their children?''
Walsh always said the mission worked, proudly ticking off the success
stories of Pedro Pan alumni like U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
Mel Martinez; outgoing Miami Mayor Joe Carollo; Eduardo Aguirre, the Bush
administration's pick for vice chairman of the Import-Export Bank, plus a slew
of doctors, accountants, bankers and other professionals.
"I didn't meet him back then,'' said Martinez, 55, who left Cuba in
early 1962. "He was this big guy we saw walking through the camp -- the big
honcho.''
Martinez reunited with his parents in 1966.
"In recent years, I went to a Pedro Pan reunion in Miami and met him
and thanked him for giving me an opportunity to be a free man in America and we
became close,'' said Martinez. "He was at my swearing-in ceremony in
March.''
Walsh played a crucial role in South Florida race relations and ecumenical
affairs.
In the years after Miami-Dade was rocked by the May 1980 race riots, Walsh
was among the voices of reason through his work with the county's Community
Relations Board, created to ease tensions.
"Black or white, it didn't matter to him,'' said activist Athalie
Range, who often found Walsh fighting alongside her. "Monsignor Walsh was a
wonderful man who was involved not just in religious but in civic affairs in the
black community. He was always at the beck and call of the underprivileged.''
Walsh showed "great compassion for the unfortunate, the poor, the
destitute, the unwashed masses. Those who would be rejected by the general
population were embraced by Walsh,'' said U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen,
R-Miami.
FREEDOM FIGHTER
Walsh was "the rare, decent man who was respectful of people of every
religion,'' said Rabbi Solomon Schiff, executive vice president of the
Rabbinical Association of Greater Miami. "He always spoke up for freedom
for all people, whether they were from Cuba, the Soviet Union, or Haiti.''
Schiff recalled how Walsh spoke at a rally calling for the release of Soviet
Jews "with such passion.''
Two years ago, Walsh was honored as the clergy of the year by the Miami
Jewish Home for the Aged, Schiff said.
David Lawrence Jr., former Herald publisher and longtime friend, described
Walsh as a community treasure.
"He was simply one of the best role models I have ever met in my
life,'' said Lawrence, now president of The Early Childhood Initiative
Foundation. "He had a great sense of humor plus enormous integrity. He was
a progressive human being in the best sense of the word.''
'BARRIER BREAKER'
Arthur Teitelbaum, Anti-Defamation League Southern area director, served
with Walsh on the Dade County Fair Campaign Practices Committee and the county
Bar Association's Special Commission on Judicial Elections.
He called him "a barrier breaker. A healer. . . . I knew him as a
vigorous opponent to bigotry in all its forms. He was a person of strong
principles, which he stated fearlessly and lived by.''
Walsh was a key Vatican advisor on refugee affairs, a member of the
Pontifical Commission for Social Development in the 1980s and chairman of the
Working Group on World Refugees Caritas Internationalis, Vatican City, since
1990.
AN INTELLECTUAL
He also was "a very deep thinker and an intellectual,'' said George
Volsky, a retired New York Times correspondent now living in Miami. "He was
very well read.''
Volsky met Walsh in the 1960s and saw him frequently at a discussion group
that meets every other month to talk about books and world affairs.
It includes Knight Foundation director Hodding Carter and financier Charles
Zwick.
"He was able to discuss the most complex things in the world,'' Volsky
said.
He also advised the late New York Times writer Tad Szulc on his 1995
definitive biography, Pope John Paul II.
"Not many people know that,'' Volsky said, "but he was very
helpful in explaining the arcane and complex inner workings of the Church.''
He is survived by a sister, Rosemarie O'Brien of New York, and a brother,
Anthony Walsh of Ireland.
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald |