A Golden Opportunity

By Tom Missel

In the early 1970s, the only social action that seemed to matter at St. Bonaventure was the years-long, acrimonious battle students waged with the administration over intervisitation rights in the dorms. Two presidents over a four-year period had asked friars like Dan Riley, John O’Connor, Ed Coughlin and Dan Kenna to come to campus to help heal the strife and move the university in a more positive direction.

But not until sophomore Bob Clark came back from a fall 1973 visit to a homeless shelter in Boston was the desire to make a difference in the lives of people outside the Bona Bubble conceived.

Just a few months later, on Feb. 6, 1974, in a shabby vacant store on North Union Street in Olean — long since bulldozed and replaced by a fast-food giant — the seeds were sown for all of the social action and service programs that have blossomed at St. Bonaventure over the last 50 years.

The Warming House, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, opened its doors.

“Coming back to Bona’s now, one of the things I find amazing is how many service programs the university does for the community,” said Fr. John O’Connor, O.F.M., guardian of the SBU Friary since last summer and director of Campus Ministry from 1974 until 1982. “Back then, I don’t think we really did anything in terms of community outreach until we started the Warming House.”

Clark’s experience in Boston was the spark.

“That visit to the Pine Street Inn really had a strong effect on me,” said Clark, Class of 1976. “I came back to the Campus Ministry staff and wondered if something like that in Olean might work. The Warming House was a combination of many people’s thoughts and dreams, a real desire to reach out to folks on the margins. Fr. Dan (Riley) and Janet deserve a lot of the credit for getting it up and going.”

Janet (Zajac) Shartle and her roommate, Gail Crowe, would often read Psalms to each other in their Shay-Loughlen room. Inspired by those passages and a desire to bring Clark’s idea to life, Shartle approached Fr. Dan.

“They had a deeper notion of what God wants us to do, a beautiful intuition to want to care for the elderly,” said Fr. Dan, who went to town with Shartle, looking for a home base for their outreach.

Olean businessman Peter Sawaya owned an empty store next to his Watch Shop.

“Mr. Sawaya said to me, ‘Does this have anything to do with the Franciscans?’” said Shartle, Class of 1974. “I said yes, he said OK, and it was as easy as that. I was very surprised when he said yes.”

More than two dozen student volunteers led by Shartle, Clark and Mike Luft, ’75, spruced up the place with donations of paint from Sherwin-Williams and supplies from the university’s maintenance department.

The kitchen didn’t need any attention. There wasn’t one.

The vital service the Warming House provides today to address food insecurity in the community — serving more than 23,000 meals in 2023, a 300% increase from just five years ago — didn’t get added to the plate until 1984.

The original idea for the Warming House was to be nothing more than a drop-in center for the disenfranchised elderly, a place to get coffee, a doughnut and fellowship from Bonaventure students. Only a few days had passed after the doors opened when volunteers realized the need was much greater.

“We discovered that it wasn’t just the elderly, but mothers and their young children, and folks with mental health needs who were either overflow from agencies or who didn’t know how to access those agencies,” Fr. Dan said.

Bill Jahn, ’72, graduated two years before the Warming House even opened, but in 1974 Fr. Dan encouraged him to look at St. Bonaventure for graduate school and invited him to take on the role of coordinator of Social Action, the precursor to today’s Franciscan Center for Social Concern.

“Coming out of the ’60s, undergrads from the early ’70s were eager to make a difference,” Jahn said. “Groups of kids would come to me wanting to volunteer at a local prison, wondering if they could do that. And we made that happen. We created a tutoring program with the local schools. There wasn’t Bona Buddies yet, but we had Big Brothers Big Sisters. There was an enthusiasm to want to be involved in something.”

BY THE TIME Fr. John left for a new provincial assignment in 1982, more than 400 Bonaventure students were involved in social action programs. One student became involved before her first class.

At the freshman orientation activities fair in 1977, Mary Trinity signed up to work at the Warming House. As a teen, Trinity often visited an older neighbor who was afraid to be alone so she had no reservations about engaging with the elderly.

“At the time, I didn’t really know anything about (social activist) Dorothy Day or the notions of hospitality from a Catholic or Franciscan perspective, but I grew up in a family where there was a great emphasis on welcoming people wherever they are and that was the Warming House. It was this great mishmash of people. It was so much more than a drop-in center for the elderly,” Trinity said. “It was also people coping with mental health or substance abuse issues, and also kids who would come in right after school who didn’t have any place else to go.”

Trinity, ’81, went to graduate school at Rutgers after graduation, but was lured back to Bonaventure in 1983 when she saw a job posting for the director of Social Action.

“I was in charge of all the Social Action programs, but the Warming House had my heart,” Trinity said. “And it took the most work because it was operating six days a week.”

During her time as a student volunteer, Trinity would make grilled cheese sandwiches and pancakes on an old griddle one of the patrons brought in, but regular meal service didn’t start until 1984 when the Warming House began serving a meal six days a week.

Forty years later, after a pandemic revealed a new way to satisfy the demand by also offering takeout service, the community need has never been more apparent. At the end of each month, as money becomes tighter for many local families, the Warming House serves an average of 125 meals a day, four times more than in 1984.

“The exact definition of food insecurity is that you have to make choices about how your money is spent, especially in times of high inflation,” said Alice Miller Nation, director of University Ministries. “We serve a lot of the working poor, people who might have cars or might have a job, and they have to make a choice between putting gas in the tank or buying food. One of the biggest services we provide is taking the edge off for people so they can make those choices knowing that they’re going to have a nutritious meal for themselves or for their family, and still be able to put money in the gas tank.”

THE NEED TO OPERATE the kitchen on a much larger scale these days hasn’t diminished the ethos of what the Warming House set out to be 50 years ago. Miller Nation insists that the students engage with the patrons, “helping them to practice our Franciscan values in an everyday kind of way.”

But the practical lessons students are learning at the Warming House are equally valuable, she said.

“It’s not just about serving a meal and making sure that people feel welcome when they walk in the door, as important as that is,” Miller Nation said. “It’s giving students day-in, day-out experiences about how to use the gifts of the people around them to make sure that they can pull off this meal. The Management 301 class comes every year and it’s usually the first time they’ve implemented the theories of management from conception through evaluation.”

Hiryu “Mike” Waseda, ’21 and ’23, the person who’s now in charge of the Warming House’s daily operations as the assistant director of the Franciscan Center for Social Concern, could never have imagined six years ago he’d be overseeing one of the university’s most mission-centric initiatives. He had no idea then what a Franciscan was, which wasn’t surprising because he hails from suburban Tokyo.

After a summer visit to his uncle’s parents in Allegany, Waseda became enamored with St. Bonaventure and started studying practical English — unbeknownst to his parents — 10 hours a day for eight months to qualify for admission to SBU.

“One of the most awkward days of my life was telling them I wasn’t going to college in Japan,” Waseda said with a smile, because today his parents are happy that he’s “doing something he’s passionate about.”

When COVID struck in March 2020, sending students home with some hope they might be back by final exams, Waseda was allowed to stay in Devereux Hall on a floor by himself.

“Mike came to us as a volunteer when the university shut down,” Miller Nation said. “He was just trying to give back to the university, who chose to keep him on campus instead of saying ‘go find another place to live.’”

Waseda admits he was in unfamiliar territory. “I had no idea what a soup kitchen even was,” he said. But he took to it immediately, noting that after only a week of volunteering, “Alice told me, ‘You’re going to be leading the team.’”

“The Warming House isn’t just a meal service. It’s more about establishing relationships,” Waseda said. “We listen to what our guests are trying to say because they often aren’t feeling supported by government or society or their families or friends. We’re just trying to make the dining room a place where they feel comfortable, with no judgments, allowing them to share their experiences.”

SHARTLE GRADUATED just three months after the Warming House opened so she didn’t have much opportunity to see how it evolved over the years. She was moved when she saw a video of students at the Warming House on the university’s website a few years ago. “I was so touched to see those students and how they still understood, as we did, that the most important thing was how you treated and welcomed people when they came in.”

Like many of the people who have frequented it over the last 50 years, the Warming House has had a nomadic existence, housed at six different locations on Union or State streets in Olean, occasionally battling community fears of the type of clientele a soup kitchen might attract.

“It’s so meaningful that it’s survived all these years. My tenure wasn’t that long but it always felt precarious, almost catastrophic each time we moved, like we would never find a permanent home,” Trinity said. “It’s wonderful that it’s still there — a treasure that most universities don’t have.”

Their Warming House experiences proved to be foundational in the career paths of so many students who worked there.

Jahn is retired after a 37-year career as a school counselor.

Shartle still works as the clinical director of a women’s addiction treatment center in Fairhaven, Massachusetts.

Trinity has devoted much of her professional life to advocacy for battered women, working with coalitions in Rhode Island, New York City and New Jersey to combat domestic violence. She was honored in 2016 with the university’s Gaudete Medal for service.

Clark worked for Catholic Charities for a year, spent four years in formation as a friar (but opted out before final vows), and became a priest in the Archdiocese of Kansas City before embarking on a long career as a social worker.

“I always wanted a spiritual life, but at Bonaventure I saw how having a spiritual life and a life of service were so intertwined,” Clark said. “The Franciscan charism of connecting to people on the margins grew on me, and the friends I made at the Warming House had similar values. I don’t think we were so much interested in climbing the ladder of success as we were in trying to make some kind of a difference in the world in our own unique way.”

Tom Missel is chief communications officer at St. Bonaventure.

Cue the Confetti

The university will host a number of events in 2024 to celebrate the Warming House’s 50th anniversary.

Some celebrations are still in the planning stages. For updates throughout the year, please visit the Franciscan Center for Social Concern’s webpage at www.sbu.edu/FCSC. Details will be posted there as they are confirmed.

• January 2024 – Birthday celebration at the Warming House for guests and Warming House coordinators/volunteers
• February 16, 2024 – Warming House Birthday Party with Dr. and Mrs. Gingerich, multi-purpose room and Freshens Café, Francis Hall
• June 7-9, 2024 – Alumni Reunion Weekend, campus
• September 26, 2024 – Empty Bowls Dinner, campus
• October 2024 – Francis Week community programming/education focused on food insecurity, campus