Remembering Ann O’Connor and her “elegant soup kitchen” in Syracuse

Ann O’Connor and Peter King by Michael Greenlar / Syracuse.com 

The CNS blog notes:

The Catholic Worker community in Syracuse, New York, lost one of its stalwarts with the death of Ann O’Connor, 81, Jan. 17.

In 1971 she became involved with Unity Kitchen Community in Syracuse, where she met her husband, Peter King. They married in 1980. Together they assumed major roles in operating the kitchen, which offered twice-weekly meals to the city’s poor and homeless residents to go along with Sunday Mass.

“She was 18 years older than me, but we met and formed an alliance,” said King, who with his wife called themselves “hospitallers,” those who provide hospitality. “We both thought the other was extremely humorous. We spent a lot of time making each other laugh. We became pretty good friends, best friends, before we got involved romantically.

“Marry your best friend, that’s my advice,” he said.

Syracuse.com had this:

In 1971, O’Connor started working at Unity Kitchen, which patterned itself on Catholic Worker communities that serve the poor. She was attracted to the kitchen as an anti-Vietnam War activist because its founders – Bob Russell and Father Ted Sizing of St. Lucy’s Church – were involved with sit-ins at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.

She was recruited because of her organizational skills, King said.

“I couldn’t believe the conditions,” O’Connor said in an interview several years ago. “They were serving mashed potatoes and coffee.”

Although she was confined to a wheelchair at the age of 16 due to severe arthritis, O’Connor dove in to her work. A year later, King began working at the kitchen. The pair met there, quickly became friends and married in 1980.

“We made Unity Kitchen our life’s work for all those years,” King said.

“One of the things Ann insisted on was that a bridge be built between the poor and the non-poor,” King said.

O’Connor persuaded her middle-class friends to help with the kitchen, which is supported entirely by private contributions. When O’Connor and King would go and speak to people about their work, O’Connor usually did the talking, King said.

“She had a way of speaking so you lost sight of the wheelchair she was speaking from,” he said. “People realized they were looking at a person with courage and guts.”

For years they ran Unity Kitchen, which amounts to an elegant soup kitchen on West Onondaga Street. Two dinners were offered to guests each week at tables set with china and silver by volunteers who served the meal. [Each table is named for a saint.] No one got paid, not even O’Connor or King. They call themselves “hospitallers.”

“We’re seeing the hidden Christ in a dignified way,” O’Connor said in an interview years ago. “We love the people who come here. It’s not like any other place. It’s real and deeply rooted in our faith.”

Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her…