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Joseph Tiraco Grace Lutheran Church, a modern glass and brick structure tucked away at the foot of 71st Road and Union Turnpike, appears concinnous to the bucolic beauty of Forest Park. Clean-cut architecture jutting against the rugged expanse of 500 wooded acres suggests the vigorous nature of the congregation, a mottled blurring of conventional denominational boundaries. Grace’s open door policy, unassuming atmosphere, and a hands on approach to Christian charity (a moderate advocation for lifting the human condition with a little help from one’s friends) has, over time, integrated diverse elements of this predominately middle class Queens neighborhood into the delicate fabric of community. The Reverend Douglas A. Haak, pastor of Grace Church, sees the universal trend of dwindling church attendance less as a general loss of spirituality, and more a droning static caused by our quick moving, highly competitive, evermore transient society. “I am very happy to see new faces at the services, and as they return seeking to belong, I try to communicate my joy as does the congregation. We offer a gentle transition, a good way to quickly become part of the community.” Kitty Walsh is not Lutheran. She worships at Our Lady Queen Of Martyrs on Queens Boulevard. She also serves as chief coordinator for Grace Church’s program to help the homeless. Her tireless efforts have earned her the esteemed appellation, Mother Goose. The lady needs help. Specifically, Grace Church, since 1986, shelters six homeless men, in a former social hall on the second floor of the church, four nights a week, Thursday - Sunday, 8:00 P.M. - 6:00 A.M. The six men arrive by bus from Manhattan, and are fed a hearty dinner by volunteers before retiring. Two volunteers must stay overnight (in private rooms) for the program to function, and thus spare six men the torments of the city’s infamous shelter system, at least for one night. Therein lies the rub. Mother Goose has to cajole, plead, beat the bushes, and twist a lot of arms to continually come up with eight volunteers a week. Another burden is the housekeeping, for which few volunteer, and must be paid in cold cash. Mother Goose, increasingly, calmly, and personally, takes up the slack, a disconcerting sign of the times in this community with deep-rooted eleemosynary traditions. Margaret Sage once married the most hated man in America, Wall Street tycoon, Russell Sage. Russell’s ruthless, even vicious, business style had made him filthy rich, and lots of enemies. One day, an enraged man he had ruined burst into Russell’s office with a gun, and started shooting. Russell seized his assistant to serve as a shield, and cowered behind him. The assistant took the bullets meant for Russell, saving his life, and leaving the assistant crippled. Unable to look at his lame employee without seeing his own shortcomings, Russell fired him, using an even lamer excuse, the assistant’s inability to faithfully perform his duties. Russell paid not a dime in severance, support, or gratitude. The former assistant sued, and won in a sensational trial, but Russell’s lawyers frustrated every attempt to collect. The richest man in the world had saved a pittance, and incurred the enmity of a nation. Margaret, in stark contrast to her husband, agonized over every downtrodden soul, and worked hard - physically labored at a Bowery mission, cleaning, cooking, feeding, nursing, laundering - to alleviate human suffering. When Russell died, he left everything to his wife, knowing full well this angel of mercy would give away the vast fortune he had spent his life accumulating. She did! Along the way, Margaret Sage funded a social experiment in community planning, a meticulously landscaped hamlet called, Forest Hills. Margaret would have approved of Mother Goose, who also loves Forest Hills, and labors selflessly in service to humanity; these two birds of a feather are remarkably similar, well attuned in moral compass and personal values. A placard in the entrance foyer of Grace Church attests to another great lady of Forest Hills, Lillian Keller Kuhn. She divided her considerable fortune among the churches of Forest Hills. Her bequest helped Grace Church burn the mortgage. Pastor Haak can pop a shirt button talking about the theater program he helped start in the church basement, The Parkside Players, now a venerable Queens institution. The good pastor was obviously bitten by the theater bug early in life. This bug gets around. John O’Hare and Charles Vuditsky are both appearing in the play, “A Few Good Men” on stage at Grace Church. John O’Hare has been a member of The Parkside Players for 15 years. Like most theater folk, he works a regular job by day, and only comes to life around a stage. “I enjoy acting, and working around the theater, building sets, making props, hanging lights, anything to help mount a production is work worth doing. I appreciate the personal satisfaction Grace Church has brought into my life.” His fellow cast member, Charles Vuditsky, sat a few feet away looking somewhat dubious of John’s paean to theater. “This is my first production since leaving school. It has been an awful lot of work. I’ve been acting for six weeks already, and nothing has happened yet!” Ah, the impatience of youth. Some things never change. |