[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 76 (Thursday, June 5, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Page S5304]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                       FATHER WILLIAM CUNNINGHAM

  Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I rise today to pay my deepest respects 
to Father William Cunningham. Detroit lost one of its favorite sons on 
Monday, May 26, when Father Cunningham died following a 7-month battle 
with liver cancer.
  His passing, and the loss we now face, brings us great sorrow. True 
heroes, after all, are never easily replaced. However, it also provides 
us a moment's pause to reflect upon and celebrate the extraordinary 
deeds of a man too humble to accept any congratulations while still in 
our midst.
  Rarely do individuals, by the sheer force of the power of their 
vision, manage to alter the destiny of an entire city. Father 
Cunningham, without question, was one of these individuals. His 
commitment to Detroit, and to eradicating the problems that plagued it, 
was unwavering. Where others decried the insurmountable obstacles, 
Father Cunningham optimistically advocated solutions.
  William Thomas Cunningham grew up in Detroit's Boston-Edison 
neighborhood. He attended Sacred Heart and St. John's Provincial 
Seminaries and was ordained into the priesthood in 1955.
  Father Cunningham was teaching English at Sacred Heart Seminary when 
widespread rioting broke out in Detroit in the summer of 1967. Just a 
few short blocks from his classroom Detroit was being torn apart, both 
literally and figuratively.
  In the aftermath of this deadly summer, Father Cunningham and Eleanor 
Josaitis, a Taylor, MI, housewife and mother, joined forces. Angered by 
what they felt was an inadequate response on the part of the religious, 
academic, industrial, and government establishments, Cunningham and 
Josaitis formed a civil rights organization, Focus:HOPE, to work to 
ensure the summer of 1968 was a peaceful one.
  In an effort to promote racial harmony, Cunningham and Josaitis began 
gathering and distributing food and clothing to riot victims. In the 
process of doing so, Cunningham learned of Agriculture Department 
warehouses stocked with food supplies. With the missionary's zeal and 
powers of persuasion that made him such an effective public servant, 
Cunningham convinced the USDA to donate these large stockpiles for 
assistance to the inner city poor.
  Today, Focus:HOPE feeds 51,000 people a month. However, Focus:HOPE 
has evolved and grown into so much more than just an organization that 
feeds the hungry.
  Father Cunningham was driven by the belief that the only thing 
separating the poor and unemployed in downtown Detroit from their 
better off counterparts in the surrounding suburbs was a lack of job 
training and education. So Focus:HOPE set out to make people more 
employable.

  Two decades later, on a forty acre industrial and educational complex 
on Oakman Boulevard in Detroit, Focus:HOPE runs myriad highly 
successful enterprises. The Center for Advanced Technologies trains 85 
people to graduate with bachelor's degrees accredited by Wayne State 
University. The Machinist Training Institute offers year-round classes 
and boasts of a 100-percent graduation and placement rate. Yet another 
program is Fast-Track, a training course to teach prospective job 
applicants the necessary math and communications skills to be 
competitive. Focus:HOPE also runs two for-profit auto parts 
manufacturing firms, High-Quality and Tec Express, not to mention a 
child care center, a communications center and a food distribution 
center.
  Consider the following statistics as a measure of the success of 
Father Cunningham's work. At the time of its conception in 1968, 
Focus:HOPE had a budget of about $12,000. In 1996, that budget had 
grown to $76 million. Focus:HOPE currently employs over 800 people and 
has 45,000 volunteers.
  Last October, Father Cunningham was diagnosed with cancer. He 
certainly wouldn't have been faulted had he chose to rest and enjoy his 
final days. Yet, as he had done his entire life, Father Cunningham 
chose to fight on. At the same time he battled his cancer, he continued 
to press forward with his latest project. In the days ahead, Focus:HOPE 
will open Tech Villas, an apartment complex of over 100 units, will be 
constructed within an empty former Michigan Yellow Pages building.
  Father Cunningham was a man who had received the praise of 
presidents, heads of industry, and an entire city grateful for his 
vision. In the end, however, Father Cunningham still thought of himself 
as a simple parish priest, no more important than those he served.
  It may be years before Detroit sees the likes of another leader as 
dynamic and committed as was Father Cunningham. No amount of tribute 
can ever begin to sufficiently repay our debt to Father Cunningham and 
Eleanor Josaitis, who will carry on their work.
  Mr. President, on behalf of all my colleagues in the Senate and all 
those who live in my State of Michigan, I bid a fond farewell to Father 
William Cunningham. While he may no longer be with us, his legacy lives 
on in the institution he built, in the city he helped save, and in the 
countless lives he touched. We truly were blessed by his presence.

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