A new Staten Island Ferry named for Dorothy Day was commissioned this past November 4, but it will finally take its inaugural trip across the harbor on Friday, April 28. 

The presence of a vessel named after this servant of God in the ferry fleet is a reminder of Ms. Day’s strong connections to the so-called forgotten borough of Staten Island. It highlights the significance of the time that Dorothy spent on the island, time that was focused on her contemplative rather than her activist side.

Dorothy Day first moved to the South Shore of Staten Island in 1924 and it was there that the seeds of her conversion to Catholicism were sown.  Her intense reading guided her toward the Church, and the beauty of the surroundings near her humble cottage by the sea stirred in her a spirit of prayer.

An unwed mother at that point, she had her daughter Tamar baptized in July, 1927, and then she herself was conditionally baptized at Our Lady Help of Christians on December 28, 1927.

Separation from the father of her child and the eventual founding of The Catholic Worker newspaper led her away from the island for long periods, but the South Shore was always a place that dwelt happily in her memory, and she was able to reside there periodically. The Catholic Worker operated a farm in Rossville from 1951-1964, which participated in the group’s mission by supplying food for the House of Hospitality in Manhattan.  

The suburbanization that occurred after the construction of the Verrazzano Bridge led to the closing of the farm, but the Worker bought two small cottages in the Spanish Camp area in the 1970s.  There Dorothy was able to spend the summers during her declining years. 

In one of her last columns for The Catholic Worker, she wrote: “In the beginning, God created heaven and earth! Looking out over the bay, the gulls, the paths to the sea, the tiny ripples stirring a path of water here and there, the reflections of clouds on the surface — how beautiful it is.” Here we see musings of someone with the eye of a mystic, one who was entranced by the magnificent vistas, of yes, Staten Island.

There is a movement afoot to revive the spirit and the mission of Dorothy Day on the island she loved so well.  Deborah Sucich is a Catholic Worker member who has been inspired by Msgr. Ray Roden, a Worker chaplain. She feels that the time is right for an implementation of the Worker charisma on the island and the possibility of opening a house of hospitality.

Quoted in an article by Kevin Clarke that appeared in America Magazine, Sucich said that “Now with her canonization coming up, we feel that Staten Island — along with the rest of the world — is much in need of the Catholic Worker movement.”

It certainly can be hoped that those who ride the newly-minted ferry boat named after Dorothy Day will be curious enough to investigate the life of its namesake.  It would be even better if all of us would imitate her ability to recognize God’s presence in nature, in the Sacraments, and in the faces of the poor.