The June 25, 2000 death of the 73-year old Auxiliary Bishop Austin B. Vaughan brought to my mind an incident that revolved about him 16 years before.

Many people of course expect bishops to live in large houses and respond only to people who call them, “Your Excellency.”

That may be the case in some regions. But it was not the situation in the fading riverfront city of Newburgh, New York in 1984.

The tale about Bishop Vaughan begins at 2 a.m. It was winter and unashamedly cold. A fire broke out in a building next to the Hotel Newburgh. The cause was arson. Clearly the greedy flames had made up their mind to do heavy damage to this abandoned building perched on our main street.

As a precaution, twenty frightened guests were evacuated from the adjoining, once prosperous, Hotel Newburgh. It is a place that you stay only if your back is against the wall. It is in the slum section of a metropolis once called the Queen City of the Hudson. The twenty had become homeless. Their ages ranged from 30- to a 90-year-old man named Strawberry.

Aside from Strawberry, who appropriately was dressed in a red jacket, they were wearing night clothes. The most pressing need of these displaced persons was shelter from the merciless winds blowing off the frozen Hudson River two blocks to the east.

Their icy predicament was just one more badly mannered and unprogrammed intrusion into lives already worn down and tired.

The police grew anxious for them but especially for the delicate Strawberry. “Hey, let’s get these pilgrims off the street and over to St. Pat’s.” In this area, St. Patrick’s parish was and happily remains a lamp shining in the darkness.

Bishop Austin Vaughan, the then pastor, and his staff had become celebrated for their care of the many poor surrounding them. Their work for the down and out was the stuff of everyday folklore here in Orange County. Its daily soup kitchen received four stars from its guests. It is impossible to compute how many thousands of meals the bishop and his people have served the poor. And, when the soup kitchen was closed, they knew they were welcome at the rectory. And one of their number once smugly told me, “The coffee there is always freshly brewed. None of that terrible instant kind.”

Saturday 3 a.m., twenty street refugees perishing with the frost found sanctuary inside St. Patrick’s rectory. It was situated about a half mile from the fire.

When the police had roused the bishop by phone, his sleepy reaction was instinctive. “Sure. Bring them right over. I’ll put the coffee on.” The cops were not surprised. They had expected no other answer. Neither I suspect did the newly homeless.

Twelve men and eight women spent their first night in a rectory with a bishop as their maitre d’hotel and concierge. Strawberry, the senior guest-in-residence, curled up comfortably on a soft chair in the corner. The smiling Bishop Vaughan told me next day, “He didn’t miss a thing. He checked me out constantly all night. I didn’t dare tell him he was sitting in my chair.”

The bishop and his staff spent the next several hours providing for their impromptu family. They were shoehorned helter skelter all about the first floor of the rectory. The bishop was not an unknown quantity to many of them. They had been his constant guests at his soup kitchen. He served them lunch each day. Oftentimes he ate with them in the downstairs school cafeteria.

At 6 a.m., the all clear was sounded. The red-jacketed Strawberry led the other guests out of the bishop’s hotel. They returned to their beds at the Hotel Newburgh. But they had drunk so much of the bishop’s caffeine I wager they did not sleep for hours.
Since it was almost time for the first Mass of the day, the bishop did not return to bed. That busy Saturday would bring confessions, weddings, evening Mass, and its inevitable surprises.

The bishop told a concerned caller, “I am tired, but it is a ‘good tired.’ Know what I mean?” Would that his tired face had matched the freshness of his spirit.

A few days later I was chatting with Bishop Vaughan. He had just returned from Communion calls to the parish’s homebound sick. He told me. “There was nothing tremendous about the whole thing. This is all part of being a parish priest.”

Perhaps it is as he said. But, if affirmative, no wonder there is getting to be fewer and fewer such priests.

Yet, one point is certain. Strawberry had enjoyed a first in his ninety years. He had slept at the bishop’s house. And he had no problem finding one when he needed him.

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