Nina Polcyn Moore Shares Memories of Dorothy Day, an Interview By Rosalie Riegle – June 1998

When you came to [Dorothy Day], you wanted to present your best self. You wanted to just tear away, like an onion and come to her with your hearts of hearts and make your presence to the Lord. Take your heart out of the white velvet box and be the purest kind of person you could be because she had that purifying effect, that sense of infirmity. She did that without knowing that she did it, and I’m sure it’s because of her life of prayer. And I … probably she was a mystic. I don’t know what that is but …we can’t imagine. No, we can’t imagine. But she had this fidelity, this fidelity, fidelity, fidelity. Staggering.

Nina Polcyn Moore (1914-2007)

Section I – Travelling to Russia With Dorothy

RR:  Would she [Dorothy Day] sometimes attend a Russian Orthodox church or a Russian Catholic church?

Nina:  She was interested in everything Russian. I think her early interests … she certainly was never a Communist but she was interested in the whole revolution, and of course she loved all the writers, too. Dostoevski and Tolstoy-those were people of great significance to her.

She brought such a richness to this work. She had been such an early reader and she was very interested in Chekov, Tolstoy, Dostoevski. All of these writers were meaningful to her and she larded her conversations with so many references that she was a delight just to listen to. You had never been to such a school as being with her. Just being with her was being at a university. You had scripture. You had music. You had archeology. You had all phases of culture, just in an afternoon. Just such a truly, truly rare person of unbounded information. Her columns were filled with it; it just flowed out.

She had that global concern, and yet that true concern with the person in front of her. That aspect of her has never been fully developed. You know she had that sense and we all were educated by this. We became less parochial and less insular. But we read The New York Times every morning and to her it was not just news, it was people and connection to the Gospel. It was people in Bosnia. It was people in Africa. The wealth of her mind was … was staggering.

I’m always startled by the fact that she came as a convert and came with this vast bedrock of the importance and dignity of the human person and this great sense of revolution for the world, that it is not as it must be. She was able to translate these surging feelings and this thirst for justice into a Catholic tradition.

You know, we went to Russia together. In 1970. Oh, it was a delightful experience, traveling for three weeks in Russia with Dorothy! She and I had always talked about going to Russia and one day she called me up and said she had this opportunity and would I go. The trip was led by Dr. Jerome Davis. He was a Methodist minister from Yale and had been to Russia twenty-five times. Spoke Russian fluently and even had an autographed picture of Lenin, spoke Russian fluently.  Dorothy got a scholarship, which means her trip was paid for by Corliss Lamont. Practically everybody was a Methodist minister or his wife. I think there was one other Catholic lady from Canada. And then Brian Duff who arranged the tour.

We went to Moscow, Leningrad, Warsaw, and…let’s see. To Hungary. Romania, Czechoslovakia. We had a weekend in their worker’s resort called Zlatni Piasatzi. 

In each place we had prearranged gatherings, discussions with local people on the peace movement. It was a very rich experience because there was sightseeing plus these conversations. Dr. Davis knew the Russians and had the contacts. This was very, very important.

We went to a collective farm and to a silk factory. Our factory inspector from Canada said that was a good one to go to because it would be clean and it would be a show-off place. There were these huge rows of machines and at each end of the machines there were a banner indicating worker performance.  For example, a row would get a banner because they did so much of this tapestry. There were pictures of Lenin around, and we got to talk to the factory manager. We heard about the day care for the women with small children, where they could go at lunch and see the child was okay.  The families lived near the factory. The inspector rushed into the bathrooms and saw that they looked fine. She knew what to look for in a factory.

The whole trip was an eye opener. Both work and study. And of course it was delightful to be with somebody like Dorothy, just an unforgettable experience. To have that whole mind explored. We saw a great deal of the Hermitage and Leningrad and just had a marvelous time with the kind of people that we met. They were all people who were trying to build bridges and understand that the ordinary person wants peace. Dorothy was great in that sense of bridge-building and seeing what we could agree on. That was the joy of the whole thing. 

We had something interesting happen though. I remember we met a priest in Moscow, I think it was, and we went to the American Embassy for Mass. It was in a recreation room and they pushed the pool tables around. Then we went to somebody’s house and the fellow said, “Well, it’s all bugged you know, so be careful what you say.”

Oh, and I remember when we first landed in Moscow. We went to this big Russian hotel, and we were trying to find a place to eat. And there would be these dining rooms with glass doors, and we would want to get in and some woman would come and stand there in front of the door and say “Nyet.” [laughter]

But whatever it was, there was a lightness about it, and a camaraderie, and everybody was pleasant. It was very … they were delightful people, you know. There was this sense that we all wanted everybody to have the richest experience that they’ve ever had, you know, and that took a little doing. So maybe people were at their top form of relationship and everybody just jelled.

I remember, we were about to get on the airplane to go home. We had turned in our passports to someone to give to the airport people and one was missing, and so we all announced to each other that we weren’t going unless all of us were going. Somebody must

have stolen it to smuggle somebody else out. Some subterfuge. Well, we waited around and the plane was there. Oh, it was very tense! Anyhow, they finally let us out.

It was very, very tense and everybody was edgy and everybody was waiting for us at the other end and you know how that is. It was just too much. But there was a lot of camaraderie. We had so much caviare in Russia and a lot of people didn’t like it. I love caviar so everybody was passing me all of theirs. I’ve never had so much caviar in my whole life!

In the recent issue of America, Robert Coles said there was no plan for the Catholic Worker. She learned so much from Peter and she really paid him his due on social questions. Yet she was continually learning and I think you don’t usually see this in adults. For most people, their notion of the church is whatever they finished grade school or high school with. They’re illiterate on so many topics, but she had this tremendous mind. I think this is really a lesson for older people. She had this tremendous spark and she was able to relate everything to the infinite. She was always, always reading and always making connections and seeing how things related to each other. She would say, “Now this is the question. Now study this question.” She herself was a student. I don’t know where she found the time to do this, but she did.

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Section II –  Finding Comfort in Chicago

RR:  Well, that’s what I’ve always wondered. She would pray in the morning and she would have this full day, often speaking in public four and five times, and that was hard for her. Would she read at night when she went upstairs?

Nina:  She did but then sometimes she would write to me and she’d say, “Don’t tell anybody I’m coming because they’ll ask me to speak. What would emerge was that so many schools asked her to come and they didn’t have any money to pay her for speaking. And she needed money for the work. These trips were fund raisers without being labeled as that. It cost money for her to travel and then the bills had to be paid–the printer, the coffee and the sugar and the food and the rent and whatever.

But then I think she just lived … she truly embraced a life of poverty. I remember once she lived in a small tenement with another lady from the house. The room was piled high with newspapers that this woman was collecting. Cold water flat, no bath, maybe a toilet down the hall. No privacy, no amenities. But that was her choice. That was her wish. So I think life was not easy for her anyplace.

RR:  Joe showed me a letter where she was really worried about the money and she told him they might have to cutoff the apple butter. I mean that’s all they put on the bread was the apple butter.

Nina:  Yes, I know. I think it was amazing that she carried the financial burden so effortlessly. It was never labeled as that. I think I have one picture of her when she just looks so tired,just so beat from the speaking schedule and traveling on buses and not knowing when she would eat the next meal. I mean she didn’t care where it was coming from, but it took its toll on her physically. I think its amazing how she carried that burden, you know. And of course there were so many issues that called to her attention again and again. It wasn’t as though she was, for example, a person in a specific job with job requirements all carefully known. [Her work] was endless.

People would telephone her and bring her people to take care of. In a way, she was like Brother Andre of Montreal-the doorkeeper. People would come to her with their darkest secrets and expect her to be a vocation director. Her roles were so varied. But she was a nurturing person and of course she was a holy person, which meant that whatever came out was meaningful.   

And you know, there are all kinds of documentation [of the changes she made in people’s lives ] Richard Cussack, who’s a neighbor here in Evanston and who does film documentaries, said that when he and Nancy were first married, they met Dorothy. She asked Richard, “What do you do?”

And he says, “I’m in PR.”

And she says, “Well, where? She’s a trained person with her scalpel and she worms it out of him that he’s doing something for Boeing, and she said to him, “Well, you can do better than that. ” So he quit his job. She was a mirror of truth. Had this magnetic effect that was just electrifying. 

When you came to her, you wanted to present your best self. You wanted to just tear away, like an onion and come to her with your hearts of hearts and make your presence to the Lord. Take your heart out of the white velvet box and be the purest kind of person you could be because she had that purifying effect, that sense of infirmity. She did that without knowing that she did it, and I’m sure it’s because of her life of prayer. And I … probably she was a mystic. I don’t know what that is but …we can’t imagine. No, we can’t imagine. But she had this fidelity, this fidelity, fidelity, fidelity. Staggering.

Dorothy visited everybody. She was very sensitive to visiting around to the different houses and there were always houses here in Chicago, but she also sometime felt a need to just collapse and do all her letter writing at one time and call up a lot of people and keep in touch that way. So when she was with me, she had a place that was peaceful. Plus Chicago is always a place to change buses or trains, you know.

RR:  Didn’t you ever become angry with at her?

Nina:  Oh, I never had that adversarial something. I don’t know.

RR:  Well, I think there were times, Nina, that she certainly needed you.

Nina:  Oh, we needed each other.

RR:  You created this comfort zone for her.

Nina:  Well, I don’t know about that but I just, I just couldn’t go to New York and live there. I tried but I couldn’t do it. It was too unstructured.

RR:  But maybe you did more for the movement and for her by providing this place and also giving her all the connections with people in Chicago.

Nina:  Well, I think we all do this at different times in people’s lives. And yet I think of Donald Gallagher, who recently died. He was a professor at Marquette and from Milwaukee and a great friend of Harry Johns who was an heir of the Miller Brewery. He helped Harry give a lot of money away to various contemplative orders.

Don used to say that the Catholic Worker is an incubator. People come and they’re warmed and they’re nourished and then they go and do their real work. Everybody can’t come and stay. You have to make room for the next people, and it’s such a special work. I admire the people that do stay. I have great admiration for Frank Donovan and Jane Sammon and those wonderful people [who stay.]. I stand in awe. I think the day by day is raw, rubbing, raw, gritting, nitty. Don’t you?

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Section III – Miscellaneous “Dorothy Stories”

RR:  Hmmm. I can take about a week in New York and that’s it. Did you ever have any squabbles with her?

Nina:  Well, I think there wasn’t any reason to squabble. Maybe she had them more with the men. Maybe there was competition with the men not wanting the woman to dominate. I don’t know, I don’t know. Once, when I lived in Minnesota, I had a letter from her asking me to call her. I didn’t realize how lonesome one can get. I think as she was getting into her 80’s, well, her energy level dropped. Her leadership was absent because she had the heart condition and that meant….well, that was it. She couldn’t go downstairs. She was fading and frail and she was on all kinds of medication.

RR:  Now were you able to go to New York much at that time?

Nina:  The last time I was there was in ’78. She always wanted to see the mines in Minnesota. She had a great interest in the Mesabi Range. She wanted very much to come and see that but she just …. she couldn’t travel anymore. She just couldn’t. And I had hoped … l would have liked … she wanted to go see her relatives. I think her sister had moved to Vancouver, and I would have gone with her, but she just couldn’t travel. So I’d call her about every Sunday. She was fading, fading, fading, but always upbeat. But the heart really was failing.

Some people are concerned that [canonizing her] would put her under the glass dome, you know. But I don’t think that will happen somehow.

RR:  Well, I hope not. In Dorothy Stories … I mean I’m going to try to give a well-rounded picture. Can you think of any sort of funny stories? Goofy things?

Nina:  Well, she really wasn’t that kind of a person.

RR:  Well, John Cort always says the same thing, that she seemed to get a lot of fun out of life and he wanted to get some of that excitement, too.  

Nina:  Yes, I remember. That’s what he wanted. And I think he was right. She gave out that sense that life has to be lived, you know. She gave that to people who came to talk to her. Hermione Evans called up one time. Her husband was a medical doctor at the University of Chicago, and Hermione and her mother had a little money and Hermione was giving it to peace causes. She would go to various places and want to protest and this was not comfortable with her husband. She talked to Dorothy on the telephone, and Dorothy said, “Well, your first responsibility is to your husband and if he’s not comfortable with this, well then don’t do it. Let your harmony be in your house.” Everybody would think that Dorothy was going to tell her to jump the fence in North Platte, Nebraska or wherever she went, but Dorothy was wise. Wise and sane.

And she knew all these people. Her contemporaries were writers, and she knew them all. But they somehow didn’t move far enough for her or they died, so she needed to latch on to new people that had the same values she had. I mean I look at my other octogenarian friends and you know, they’re dull. They don’t have any vision. They’ve someplace and I think you want to connect up with a little more imagination. Sparkle, zip, razmataz.

RR:  Nina, much of the following doesn’t make too much sense, so I won’t be using most of it, but I wanted you to see it anyway, to remember our afternoon together, which was so meaningful to me.  Can we look at the pictures now?

Nina:  Alright. I’ll show you what I have here. This is recent. Pat Rusk at Dorothy’s beach house. Sweet?  

RR:  Did you take these?

Nina:  No. Dorothy sent these to me. She got strength from a lot of these people, you know.

This is 1978; that’s the last time I saw her. On Staten Island (she is showing pictures) Now this is Dorothy, my sister and I, and my sister’s husband, and their children. This kid, Dorothy wrote him a letter to be a CO, and he’s now teaching poverty law at the University of Chicago Law School.

RR:  Oh, isn’t that wonderful!

Isn’t that something! This was taken in Russia.

RR:  You look a little like Kathleen Jordan there, don’t you think?

You think so? That’s nice, thank you. Oh, here’s Kathleen.

RR:  Well, I think you do look like her.

Oh, I’d be thrilled. This is Catherine De Hueck. Now I was visiting Dorothy and Catherine came in this beautiful, blue dress. Dorothy was upstairs in her cluttered room and she said, “Let’s go down to the kitchen, I don’t want her to see my room.”

Now this is all stuff from our trip, you know. Budapest, and so forth. (going through pictures) I thought I would give those to the archives.

RR:  Oh yes, you should

You’ve probably seen them. This is Barbara and Peter, Joe and Alice. I don’t like this one, do you? (Looking at the icon)

RR:  No, but we’ve got it hanging in our front room. When somebody gives you something you kind of need to hang it, I think

Editor’s Note:  The transcript indicates that tape one ends abruptly due to a microphone problem, so this interview picks up at a later time with tape two of the interview.  -AM

Nina:  Dorothy tells a story about Tamara, who had nine children, you know. I think one morning while they were all frantically looking for their mittens and their shoes and their homework, Tamara just got to the end of her rope. She sat down and said, “I haven’t had a decent cup of coffee since any of you were born.” Probably a very adequate appraisal.

RR:  Well, earlier we were talking about the problematic family at the farm in Easton.  I want to read this part in here. 

“This is Corpus Christi, 1950. We need $5,000 more for our house. We borrowed $4,000, hope to have the other 5 by July lst. It takes some prayer and fasting, have given up meat for a year. It is easier than the bread and water business. We ‘ve signed a contract for the new place.

“I took care of my brother-in-law for three days and now am in bed for a day relaxing, which is what we executives should do more often.”

Nina:  She did that a lot.

RR:  She knew when she had to quit. Otherwise she couldn’t have kept going.

Nina:  I think that was her restoration.

RR:  Now, this is when she is planning to go to Rome. Did they get a private audience? They didn’t, did they? I should ask Jim Douglass.

Nina:  I don’t think so, I don’t think so.

RR:  She says, “I’ll be quite content to get there and breathe the holy atmosphere of Rome. “

Nina:  See, I had no dependents and I just knew that she needed taking care of on some of these things. I couldn’t have done better. No, no complaints, shall we say, no complaints.

She did a lot of traveling with Eileen Egan. Eileen is frail now, isn’t she? 
Here’s an amazing person. He [name not mentioned] was a fragile, brilliant man, who was a white pastor in a black parish and he died quite recently. He started Peter Maurin House. He wanted to be poor, to live with the poor, so he lived on the top floor, but it didn’t last terribly long. It was just an unworkable arrangement and he was just the gentlest of hearts, a gentle man.

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Section IV – Letters Between Friends

RR:  Well, this one is cute. I don’t know what she is thanking you for, but anyway, she says, “February 9,1964, “Dearest Nina: What a darling you are. I am looking forward to a visit with you when I come out to that horribly, frightening lecture which I shall prepare carefully and then wander all around the lot, as I usually do, but I could never refuse, not that you can with that great pioneer. “

Nina:  Oh, that was sweet!

RR:  “Pray for good weather. Arthritis in the feet makes it hard to get around, but if I do a little more fasting in Lent, it may be eased. This is interesting. St. Theresa of Avila said her health improved when she inflicted a little more pain on herself with voluntary mortifications.

Nina:  See, nobody knows about those things anymore.

RR:  Yeah. “How can it be done? “She’s wanting to write 350 words on St. Theresa. She says, how can I ever do that? “How can it be done? I’ll have to ask her, meaning St. Theresa. As for your money, I’ll be using most of it to send a little 19 year old run-away back to her home. She has been with us for the last 5 months and had a stillborn child. “

Nina:  Oh dear, poor darling.

RR:  “She and her brothers and sisters have been brought up in a welfare home and she herself had spent three years in a mental hospital. Everything is straightening out little by little for her. She is a wild but sweet thing and I sure am glad to get her away from New York. I always think of Tamara or Becky when we come up against this situation. ” So that’s nice. She says we have to learn to speak some Russian, so she was going to go to her class on Russia. Isn’t that something?

Nina:  Oh, yes, yes! Here’s one: July 17, 1964, Dearest Nina, What gorgeous stationery. I was just harshly judging some of our nuisances, beatniks on the one hand and drunks on the other when your note came and the quote from _____________ on loving, forgiving, faith and hope, changed my point of view at once. Can you send me some cards with good quotes on them? You are a darling.” That’s cute!

RR:  Read the third paragraph. I think it’s about travel.

“Traveling is a great recreation and a great enlightener. I do enjoy it so and I am so glad you get the same kick out of it. What about our date to go by car to the west coast this winter? Tamara may take a practical nursing course, one of these government rehab programs, and the first four months, she’ll be away from home in Brattleboro, Vermont and I must go and stay with the kids. The last eight months she can live at home and work in the local hospitals. She can manage then somehow. The darling, she has weathered many storms. I think she’ll be good at this, just as she’s good with children and animals. It’s too good of a chance to be missed. So from September 9th to January 1st, I will be in Perkinsville, God willing. Oh, that’s very nice!

RR:  I think she did go.

I think she did, yes. It seems to me you see this woman in the life of the 90’s now, even though she died in 1980, right? I think you see what this life means or meant or is going to mean.

Because we’re all in such revolutionary changes! At times, the political scene is just frightening.

Well, Frank Donovan says that everybody has their own Dorothy Day. To me that’s a very cogent expression. But as you get older, you see her now in the 90’s in terms of, you know the revolution in Asia and the economy and in terms of the industrial situation where there are jobs, but there’s different kinds of jobs and there aren’t jobs and the entry level is so low and the welfare problem is so exhausting. You see her with a different image from the 80’s and the 70’s and the 60’s. And she grew all the time and now you see the wisdom of this person for this particular moment. Only now you have to apply it yourself.

RR:  Now, I think that some people, because their image of Dorothy is fixed, they don’t make that leap.

They don’t move.

RR:  Or they’ll put words in her mouth, say for instance, what would Dorothy would have said about the demise of the welfare system. I Dorothy didn’t see that change.

No, she wasn’t concerned with the system. She was concerned with the personal response and that’s still terribly important right this minute.

RR:  Maybe more important.

Maybe more importantly as we see the system collapse and taking unexpected turns in every country. Here’s a letter from 1966. She’s recommending spiritual reading to me. Writings from the Great Peacemakers with two marvelous articles by Martin Luther King. Pope John the 23rd’s Journal, and Pope John, the Transitional Pope, both by McGraw-Hill. And then she says, “These are such spiritual readings, you cannot put them down. They warm and cheer the heart and give more patience and courage. You are counted worthy to suffer in Chicago because you have all had such great desires.” She’s talking about Father Hugo here. They were reprinting some of his work in the paper.

RR:  Looks like he’d been getting some compliments and then she said, “Father Hugo has always felt so rejected. His doctrine is so true to scripture, but he should apply more of it to himself and rejoice at his being pressed, the mystery of suffering. !\I feel so close to you always, you know how it is. I can drop in on you, not having seen you for two or three years and it is just the same. We are members of a family. It’s not just the CW Family, it is the church. ” Underlined. “Thank God for it, institutional and charismatic. I’m reading the Penguin edition of Dorothy Sayers’ Translation of Dante. Finished The Inferno and now on Purgatorio. The introduction is so many pages long about the times, the church, the churchmen. The times of Dante make our troubles seem so picayune. We are in a healthy state. Give my love to your dear family. Would love to see you. Hold fast. You’ll never know the great work you’ve done.” Isn’t that beautiful?

You can read that at my funeral. You know, we’re wrapped up in ourselves that we, so few people compliment other people. I think this is one of the lax things that I see in relationships. We take each other for granted and it takes a little doing for somebody to come out of himself and acknowledge the beauty of the other person. And that’s something that Dorothy Day could do with ease. Maybe she did it better in a letter than in person, and I think maybe she was hard on a lot of people in the houses. Some of the day to day friction must have been painful.

RR:  Well, you mentioned earlier how she saw the temptations and the problems.

Nina:  Yes, she did.

RR:  One thing that somebody said to me once… Father Keenan told me that Catholic Workers are nice to the guests. We know we must be pleasant to the poor but then we come down hard on each other. Take out all the frustrations. And so Dorothy would have to deal with all of these terribly opinionated people.

Nina:  Yes, the interpersonal relationships which are so fragile.

RR:  But you were this … separate oasis.

Nina:  Isn’t that funny?

RR:  Plus, Nina, you don’t go around picking fights.  

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Section V – A Story of Providence

Nina:  I wanted to remind you about this lovely story. A man with a lot of money came to see Dorothy. I know Dorothy had this real estate woman, a professional person, who knew all the regulations of New York housing, who knew exactly what the problems were in rehabbing an old building. Anyway, Dorothy and this woman were there and showed this man the building on Third Street which became Maryhouse. They discussed how it would cost and the housing expert explained the problems of the fire doors and the kind of else, restoration that had to be done to meet the code. At the end of the meeting, the man rather indicated that this was not where he was going to leave his check. Now this is a true story. Two or three days later, Father Bamberger who was the Abbott of the Trappists on the Genesee (whatever the legal name is, I don’t know) called up and said that somebody had just given them a large amount of money and they were well taken care of and he was going to send it on to the Catholic Worker. Dorothy said that it was from the same man who had rejected them in the first place. Which is a lovely triumph of God’s Providence!

RR:  Oh, yes!

Nina:  Then there’s that story about Auden, when Dorothy was convicted of being a slum lord and he gave her a check. He said, “This is 250,” and she thought it was $2.50 and it was $250, which  whatever time it was given-forty, fifty years ago–was a lot of money. So there are multitudes of answers to prayers written on little slips of paper and slipped under the statute of St. Joseph. Prayers or fasting. 

RR:  Nina, I’ve heard a couple of versions of the Auden story; in one of them, he walks up and hands her the check. In another, he gives it to someone else. Do you happen to remember how she told it to you?

Here ‘s a letter that I would like to have you read into the tape. It doesn’t have anything to do with you, but it’s the most I’ve ever seen about her relationship with her brother, Donald.

Nina:  [reading the letter aloud] “October 22nd, Dearest Nina, News of Donald’s death came this morning of Becky’s wedding in Vermont. He had died the day before. Donald kept in close touch with my sister and his good letters were shared by all of us. He had written me a few weeks before in response to one of my rare letters to him. He was happy, active and on a fishing trip and it was his wife who was ailing with a heart condition. It came as a shock to all, the first of the five of us to go. He was two years older thfill’I. Nina, send me any clippings of the Tribune(?) about death. He was writing for them again pretty regularly. We would have love to see them and send them on to his widow. I have one more speaking engagement in Montreal and will be away the first week in November, but if you come to New York at all, let me know so we can visit. Much love always.”

That’s sweet. She loved Donald, didn’t she? You know, there’s such a Chicago connection that I hope that US. Catholic works on doing some kind of a special issue about where she lived here and the church where she was baptized and all that background.

RR:  And then she came again as an adult.

Nina:  Yes, then she came as an adult. And also there’s a very crazy story that John Cogley always used to tell. He said that Mother Cabrini and Dorothy Day were not simultaneous in age but he had a crazy, vision of Dorothy Day roller skating up and down Fullerton Avenue and Mother Cabrini who had established a hospital nearby, patting Dorothy on the head. (Laughter)

RR:  Oh, I wish I could have known him!

Nina:  Oh, he was a sweet guy.

RR:  Well, Chicago’s always been like the second Catholic Worker. It’s such a Catholic town.  Isn’t that something? Well, here she’s talking about Michael Collins’ new house in Milwaukee. Let’s see. “I’m torn by my love for the houses and the work they’re doing and duty (she was needing to give a speech) but she did.  She loved to visit the new houses.

Nina:  Oh, she did. She really did.

RR:  I hope, oh I’m sure Michael will talk about that.

Nina:  Yes,. Oh, I was so glad to meet him. So glad to meet him.

RR:  Well, he is a charmer. Here’s the Seventies. She’s tired, and she writes, “I have to keep the speaking engagements. We always need the money. “

Nina:  Yes, I think it was very hard on her. Very hard on her. She was overbooked and I don’t think she liked to do it ,really. The travel was hard on her, very painful and she was so tired.

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Section VI – Destroying Draft Records, Failing Health, & a Wedding Feast

RR:  [reading aloud] “I have four letters from presidents who answered. I do not approve of record burning, never did.”

Nina:  No, those actions were very hard on her.

RR:  But Tom Lewis tells me [she approved.] He makes a big thing about how Dorothy turned around and smiled at him at the trial. Of course she loved people.

Nina:  Of course she did. [Her disapproval of the resistance actions] doesn’t mean that it wasn’t meaningful to her. I think also that some of the new liturgies were hard on her too, around the kitchen table and not having the proper accouterments . She found those things very painful, but she was gracious about it.

RR:  Well, I see that even when there was much that she objected to, morally and spiritually and philosophically, she still loved the people.

Nina:  Yes, and she was very non-judgmental.

RR:  The men who went into the army in the second World War, she accepted them back. And towards the end of her life, it seems she accepted the divorces and a lot of ..

Nina:  Yeah. I think they were very hard on her because of her own life. You know? There were many, many things that were painful for her.

RR:  Here ‘s one where she ‘s talking about her physical condition. In ’71 I think. Do you want to read it?

Nina:  [reading aloud]  “March 16th. Here I am laid up again, cold, flu, virus, pleurisy, leaking valve, breathlessness, pain in right side, liver, lung (question mark.) It surely looks as if all indications are…I am staying at home here in Tivoli, to conserve my strength or rebuild it after my last year’s travels. After all, I was born in 1897. I’ve seen a lot of this world and I’m not much longer in it; that is, unless I take pains to conserve my energy, sit in the sun, walk a little, instead of being propelled everywhere. I would like to have ten more years to write, to live the life of a hermit here. So much as I love Russia, I will use maps and guidebooks and literature to do my traveling, I’m afraid. Why don’t you take one of your nephews and nieces. What a break it would be for them. Or Mary Woodman or one of hers. Do go. You are so much younger than I that it will be only joy and recreation, but now for some time I’ve been at a low ebb. I just happened to think of Helene Iswolski and her warning, that Russia is not welcoming to America these days, what with the constant and grieving Jewish protest. They are determined not to endure what they went through in Germany, a Holocaust. They keep using that word and the situation in the Near East is still critical. I am sorry to be a gloom, but I’m really ill and writing takes a long time. Much, much love.”

Oh, that’s a low ebb, isn’t it? Low ebb, low.

RR:  But I think it’s important that we know [that she wasn’t always upbeat.]

Nina:  Yes, she did have her lows.

RR:  She was like other people. Here she’s writing about Karl Meyers. “Bad news from Karl. His letter was not forwarded and I missed the trial, He got two years and $2,000 fine. This was tax resistance. The saddest thing is that he’s given up. He’s lost his faith not only in the church, but in Christianity. Now, I see it a little differently, but anyway…that knowledge is from the strange attitude of Cathy Meyers, his wife, I think He did not want them to tell me until he could bring himself to write. All I can do is pray. I would feel that it is my fault, my failure, if that were not vanity. ” This is later: Home again and so happy to have had such a trip and now to be home. You do your work and I do mine. “

Nina:  Oh, that’s nice. Where was it, what year?

RR:  Phil has written on it, August, 1972.

Nina:  ’72. Well I was working at St. Benet.

RR:  Oh, she’s so upbeat now. “How good God is. Our lives are falling in goodly places. “

Nina:  I like that quote too, don’t you?

RR:  You were a missionary all right. I have never seen. I grew up with good Protestant people, so … 

Nina:  Oh that was our trip.

RR:  Both turned on, both in laughter and in prayer. What did you do?

This must have been after the trip to Russia. She says, ” Thank you, thank you, thank you. I never would have had this without you. ” It was just such a wonderful time for her.

Nina:  Well, she was a good traveler too, you see. And then we had interesting things. In Warsaw, when a Polish dissident said that he was so proud of Johnny Baranski. I told him that I  had gone to Johnny Baranski’s court hearing. I didn’t know him. Somebody had come into St. Benet and said Johnny Baranski had poured blood on draft records and he’s in court down the street.

So I said to the staff, keep everything going and I ran down to the court and there was his father in tears. No, I remember, it was my friend John Clark’s son who was there. That’s why I went. And Johnny Baranski was with him. John Clark’s parents found the situation very difficult.  So I went to console the young man.  

Then I saw Johnny Baranski’s father and I just told him what a great guy the kid was. You know, you try to be a healer in times like this. And then I called up the Clark kid’s parents and said what a hero he was and well, they wouldn’t listen to any of that. Even to this day, they find it very painful. But you know you do what you have to do in that case. So it was very wonderful that in Poland, somebody had heard about Johnny Baranski. I don’t know what the charge was, I think it wasn’t terrible. The Clark young man lost his shoe because he had blood on it and it was taken as evidence. These were young people who felt very strongly about the war. So I was glad to tell them in Poland that I had seen the trial.  Talking about it in Warsaw of all places. So, there are little vignettes from that trip.  

RR:  Here’s an interesting letter. 1972 possibly. “Dearest Nina, Man proposes and God disposes and here I am tucked away at Tivoli, looking out on a snow-covered landscape and very grateful to God for having giving me a good push, just a little problem of heart failure, a tired, old heart. It is not travel,(this was April) it is the speaking and the fall trip to the west and south is too much. More speaking was piling up for New England, etc. and I just collapsed. Women do so love to talk. They cannot conceive of it as being work, too, and they sure ring you dry at the schools and colleges. “

Nina:  They do.

RR:  “Probably a lot of vanity and pride entered in and having the young turn out, so many temptations with the devil. Far better to stay here in peace and quiet and write and I am getting down to the book again, with much encouraging from Harpers. And then she talks about all the books coming out in paperback in November for drugstores, bus stations, airports, etc. Curtis Books did it.

Nina:  Oh, yes.

RR:  She wants to buy a braille typewriter for Dean. “Don’t let yourself get down into such a valley of fatigue. It is hard to climb out again. “

Nina:  Oh, she must have been so tired.

RR:  And then she can’t stop writing. A big red cardinal on my window sill right now. Have you any books about birds and their habits?

Nina:  Oh, sweet! The continuing, the evolving, curiosity, yes, she’s fatigued, but she’s still, she’s still has the life of the mind.

RR:  Here’s when Notre Dame was giving her that big award.

Nina:  Yes, I took her there.

RR:  She’s saying here though, “I just cannot make it. The doctor said it was out of the question. I’ll be 75 in November and must take things quietly. I suggested that they have you or Dr. William Miller receive the medal for me. You should have my letter on Thursday.” But she ended up going.

Nina:  She went. She went she couldn’t go to the dinner, and so on. She wasn’t interested. She just couldn’t care less about Hannah Arendt and all those other people there. She had no energy left.

RR:  Here’s her copy of the letter from the IRS. ” Open ended, ” it says, but they said “no further action. ” This was the end, I think I don’t think they bothered them anymore.

Nina:  No. Isn’t it fascinating? She put so much on these little cards didn’t she? I mean she just wanted to communicate? And she had so much to say on so many levels.

RR:  [reading from another letter] “This is for your wedding. Your magnificent gifts arrived and your feast days will be celebrated here and in New York with great joy. ” 

Didn’t you send them money to celebrate your marriage to Gene? How neat!! 

“Here the population o/70 called for pot roast. At the farm I guess they got ice cream and cake and undoubtedly, John the Farmer and a few others will get drunk, but they will topple quietly, or Marge and I will know the reason why. ” (Laughter)

“We are rejoicing already for you and Gene and for dear Hans whom we are burying today, a peaceful and beautiful death. Thank God for our faith. ” 

Well, that’s wonderful. So you sent money so they could feast.

Here this is, she’s writing after your wedding trip:   “Welcome home! Your celebrations here at the farm will be long remembered. The vegetarians at the farm wallowed in fruit salad and vegetables and the rest had pot roast, which I like nothing better. Here in New York, the Bowery got word of the festival and the soup line passed the word along and 300 came for spaghetti and meatballs, in the house. The seniors from the line took a vote. It was pot roast, tender, juicy and not a bone in it. Melted in your mouth. That was a feast. And then she says, I loved the feast always being described in Dickens. (Laughter) The house considerately waits for me to come home and share in this. So you might say we celebrated your festivities.”

Nina:  Wasn’t that dear?

RR:  Oh, that was a lovely thing for you to do.

Nina:  Well, it was the only thing to do, after all. You might as well rejoice all over the place, right?

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Section VII – Biography

A good friend of Dorothy Day, Nina Polcyn Moore (1914-2007) was one of the founders of Holy Family House, the first CW in Milwaukee, and was also a lifelong friend to the Catholic Worker movement.  Dorothy would often stay with Nina when she visited Chicago, and the two of them traveled three weeks in Russia together in 1970, on a trip organized by Dr. Jerome Davis of Yale. But their friendship started when Nina arranged for Dorothy to speak at Marquette University.

After teaching in the Milwaukee Public Schools, Nina moved to Chicago in the Fifties and managed and then owned St. Benet Book Shop at 300 St. Wabash until she married in 1973. St. Benet Book Shop, with an engaging Nina at the helm, was a beacon for Catholic intellectuals, both religious and lay, at a time of exciting changes in the church, sparked by Vatican II. Catholics from around the country would stop at the shop to find lively discussions, books on the latest ideas, and contemporary religious art unavailable elsewhere.

“This came to be her way of being faithful to the vision of Dorothy Day,” said Roy Larson, former religion editor of the Chicago Sun-Times. Rev. John Gorman, a retired auxiliary bishop in the Chicago archdiocese said, “She was the heart and soul of the place.”

When Nina married Thomas E. Moore in 1973, they sent a meat feast to the Worker in New York so everyone there could share in the celebration. She attended the Chicago Worker 50th anniversary celebration, and after she learned of the 2006 National Catholic Worker Gathering in Iowa, she anonymously contributed $7,000 to make it possible. She was also an enthusiastic supporter of artists who spread the message, particularly her friends, actress Sarah Melici and film-maker Claudia Larson.

(Biographical information from https://www.pieandcoffee.org/2007/02/17/moore/)

Rosalie’s interviews with Nina Polcyn Moore were made available courtesy of the Marquette University Archives. Many thanks to William Fliss for sharing these transcripts from the Dorothy Day-Catholic Worker Collection and to Ashley McCormick of Mary’s House Catholic Worker for formatting and posting this resource.