Remembering Vincent Scotti Eirine

How Duncan and Porter CW Got Its Name

My wife and I recall getting a team of evangelical college students to Manchester to help do some rehab (what little we knew) of a falling down place that Vince had acquired and intended to turn it into a house of hospitality for the homeless. My wife found an old metal plate long covered up, in the dirty basement, and it had the logo of an old Pittsburgh company, Duncan & Porter (maybe a brick manufacturer?)  Vince immediately thought of a Bible verse that talks about Jesus being the chief cornerstone of Christian faith — and as the verse continues,  “that the builders rejected.” He loved the idea that this long forgotten Duncan and Porter piece had seemingly been rejected but was discovered and became the cornerstone of his little effort to build a whole new world. 

—Byron Borger

Shedding Light on Rocky Flats

I recall a party /prayer service /send-off we did at one of the Ducan and Porter Houses the night before he left to engage in a nonviolent direct action witness against making nuclear weapons at the Rockwell-run Rocky Flats Plant outside of Denver. We knew there would be armed guards and we knew even with his nonviolent demeanor, it would be dangerous. At best, he’d get a large jail sentence. He asked me to come and preach a little homily about his faith that led him to such audacious acts of witness to a better world. Some of the soon to be international rock stars from the Pittsburgh-based band Rusted Root were there, playing some unplugged acoustic songs.  As I talked about Vince’s own conversion to a lively relationship with Jesus and his Biblically-driven lifestyle of service to the poor and peacemaking, one of the guys in the band cussed at me, telling me to shut the f up. I cussed back, telling him to shut the f up because Vince is the only one in the room who had the courage to do this amazing action and we should all want to honor him by caring about what inspired him. The guy shouted out, “You’re right, man, I’m sorry. Keep preaching.” Vince thought this was hilarious and wondered if Billy Graham ever had any world famous rock stars try to interrupt him.  In subsequent years civil disobedience at Rocky Flats became a thing, and even bigger rock stars (Jackson Browne, Bonnie Rait) played there in protest. He was one of the first to expose that particularly dark place. It eventually was declared so polluted and radioactive that the government closed the plant and Rockwell was sued by the EPA and eventually went out of business. Sometimes I wonder if it was Vince’s faithful, solo action that started to shed the light on that complicated place. 

—Byron Borger

‘A Heart As Big As the World’

Vincent Scotti Eirene dedicated his life to peacemaking (even legally changing his name to
“Eirene”, the Greek New Testament word for peace), and he was the consummate peacemaker.

With a heart as big as the world, and a phenomenal sense of humor, he was disarming. The
humor was not just some fun aspect of Vince’s personality; it was an essential tool by which he creatively and effectively engaged people, especially opponents. He lived his faith-filled
commitment to nonviolence, to following the way of the Cross, by taking into his home
homeless men in Manchester and by engaging in creative nonviolent civil disobedience actions against the nuclear arms race, which led to multiple years in jail. For him, militarism and homelessness were inseparably connected. He walked the talk and sacrificed his life for peace.

Along the way he led us to Rockwell International in downtown Pittsburgh, then the third largest military contractor in the US, to the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute, to Baghdad during the US invasion, to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s front yard, to the White House and the Pentagon, to Pantex in Nevada, to the coal-denuded mountains of West Virginia, to New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina, and to so many other places of violence and suffering. With him came people like Phillip Berrigan (his dear friend and mentor), actor Martin Sheen, writer Naomi Klein, musician Bruce Cockburn, and so many others.

Two stories illustrate Vincent’s peace work. In the 1990s Vince was falsely accused of assaulting a police officer. In fact, it was Vince who had been assaulted by the officer. The charges were serious and he faced a jury trial. A crucial character witness, along with Phil Berrigan, Martin Sheen and Byron Borger, was the retired Head of Security at the Steel Building, the home of Rockwell International. The two had developed such a mutually respectful and genuine relationship over the years that he was delighted to testify on Vince’s behalf. The jury rightly declared Vincent innocent of the trumped up charges.

Vincent travelled to Baghdad during the invasion of Iraq, in a small group that included Naomi Klein. He had consistently advocated for peace for Iraq since the first Gulf War. The Bush administration, led by Donald Rumsfeld, had claimed that the Iraqis would rush into the streets to welcome their American liberators. Nothing of the sort happened. But they did welcome Vincent. He wrote, “it was almost like a reward, meeting the people we had been fighting for, for decades. They were just so glad to see us. They were so hospitable; when different hospitals and hotels were being bombed they took us into their homes. They were very gracious. It’s something that I will always remember. It was just good to be drawn in by people who held no ill-will to us, despite all that happened.”

Vincent’s inspirations included Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement, Thomas
Merton, Mahatma Ghandi, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., St. Francis and Jesus. His life was
driven by a deep Gospel faith. He published four books. The jewels of his life were his two
daughters, Kaitlin and Chenoa. He was a completely devoted father. His life was materially
poor but indescribably rich. There has been no one like him. He leaves behind a legacy of
family and friends, of real-world peacemaking, of love and of creative witness to the truth.

—Mark Vander Vennen