Bread of a new life
ROPE program transforms lives through baking
Story and Photos by Marylynn G. Hewitt, SFO
Published August 10, 2007
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Plump onion rolls are golden brown when removed from the oven.
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John Floyd Francis Karnicki crimps the edge of pie crust a skill he's just learned. | |
Detroit Edward Collins, fresh out of prison, was clinging to the hope he'd be able to do something worthy with his life. He'd spent 33 of his 58 years incarcerated more than half his life. This was his fourth release for various robbery and theft charges. But it was the first time, he says, he believed in himself. "I was ready to give back. I'd been taking for so long."
After 23 years in food service, from training as a sous-chef at the Book Cadillac Hotel to working in prison kitchens, Collins says he felt he had something to offer if he could find someone willing to take a chance.
He knew nothing about the work of the Capuchins when he went to the soup kitchen seeking a bus pass so he could look for a job.
Collins had no idea of the history of the place. No idea that during the Great Depression in 1929 the poor of Detroit knocked on the doors of the monastery on Mount Elliot asking for bread. No idea of the multitude of services offered. And no idea that the onetime porter of St. Bonaventure monastery, Ven. Solanus Casey, who worked to help feed the poor, is in line to become the first American-born male saint.
These days, the Capuchins aren't only handing out bread. They are helping some of the most unemployable of society by teaching them to bake the bread and other pastries. Or as Collins puts it, "Instead of just feeding us, they are saving generations."
Bakery orders
In addition to visiting parishes, the ROPE bakery offers pick-up at the Capuchin Soup Kitchen, 1264 Meldrum, Detroit.
To place an order or request a parish visit, call Bro. Ray Stadmeyer, OFM Cap., at (313) 822-8606, Ext. 34 or fax (313) 822-9163.
Bread white, wheat or rye: $3
Rolls onion or dinner: 1/2 dozen $4; dozen $6
Pies apple, cherry, strawberry: $6
Turnovers apple, cherry, strawberry, lemon: $2
Cookies chocolate chip, peanut butter, oatmeal-raisin, sugar: $1 each or $10 a dozen
Brownies: $2
Muffins: $1
Cinnamon buns: $2
| Taking a chance
Bro. Ray Stadmeyer, OFM Cap., took a chance on Collins and it ended up being a new chance for himself as well. (Though he is a priest, he goes by "brother" "since that is our first vocation, our primary call, to be a 'brother.'")
For nine years he's been the chaplain of the two soup kitchen sites, one on Meldrum and the other on Conner. In recent years, he says, passing out bread and meals to those who were hungry didn't seem to be enough as the economy tanked, jobs and homes were lost and families crumbled. He kept reminding himself that Jesus also changed and healed lives.
Bro. Stadmeyer, 52, admits he was "feeling pretty exhausted seeing the plight of people and not seeing any changes in their lives." One experience in particular weighed heavily on him. "It was a holiday and a man came in and said his grandfather had taken him here, and now he was taking his grandchild. He said it like that was a good thing. But it's so sad. We'd been thinking about this, but that really drove it home. We needed to do something that's proactive in people's lives."
Impact of the Super Bowl
When Detroit hosted Super Bowl XL in 2006, much was made about the homeless as the eyes of the nation turned to the Motor City.
Shortly afterward, a woman who owned a bakery contacted Bro. Stadmeyer offering to help some of the homeless people learn how to bake. For a few Saturdays she taught cookie making and then bread baking. "Then we had the thought maybe we could sell them to the monastery (at Sunday Mass). That Easter (2006) we made $230 selling these little loaves of bread and thought that was the greatest thing! We were like, 'Oh, I can't believe we made that much money,'" he says and laughs at the memory. The bakery owner soon left, but gifted them her cookbooks.
By then Bro. Stadmeyer knew there was something about baking and changing lives. "I can't bake," he insists. Burned cookies and flat loaves of bread didn't deter him.
That's when Collins came along.
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Bro. Ray Stadmeyer, OFM Cap., left, and Purcell Pryor, right, knead loaves of white bread. | "To be accepted"
Collins says his first thought on meeting Bro. Stadmeyer, in his Franciscan habit, was, "the last time I saw someone dressed like that was in the 'Zorro' movie."
After volunteering to bake a few Saturdays, he found something he'd been seeking. "To be able to come here and be accepted, well it means a lot to a guy to be accepted," Collins says.
His experience in the food industry "really changed the whole tone for us," Bro. Stadmeyer says. It also changed the focus of the baking employment project and became the foundation for a year-old program called ROPE, which stands for Reaching Our Potential Everyday.
The symbolism behind the ROPE acronym is "as I'm climbing the rope I've always got my hand back to get somebody else," says Bro. Stadmeyer. "So they are pulling somebody else up as well. We don't climb up just individually, but we take the next person. That's why the whole sense of community is important to them. It's something they aren't used to."
There are now four men involved, three of whom have been incarcerated and a fourth who has just left an alcohol rehabilitation program. They gather in the after-hours of the kitchen on Meldrum and typically bake pies, cookies, breads, muffins and rolls.
On weekends they sell the baked goods at parishes throughout the Archdiocese of Detroit. The four men, all formerly homeless, live as a community in a house that opened in November, found through the Detroit Catholic Pastoral Alliance. Its cost is paid for by part of what they earn selling baked goods.
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Edward Collins prepares to put a pan of rye bread dough into the oven. His baking skills enhanced the ROPE program.
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Purcell Pryor, left and Edward Collins, right, at one point were homeless and now live in the ROPE house. | | While Collins bakes full time, the other three bake part time and spend the rest of their time working on their lives with the help of counseling, Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous or, completing their education.
Each of the men has made a one-year commitment to ROPE, which Bro. Stadmeyer says is "really pretty open ended." There have been a few, he says, who tried it and then left.
He's quick to point out that the goal of ROPE is not about running a bakery, though their own full-time bakery is hopefully in the near future. Rather, the goal of ROPE is instilling healthy relationships and community.
Ven. Solanus Casey
Coverage in The Michigan Catholic:
July 20 Praying for the cause for his canonization.
July 27 The life of Fr. Solanus Casey; readers share their blessings.
Aug. 3 Coverage of the Mass of the 50th anniversary of his death.
This week In new ways, his legacy continues.
For more information:
Capuchin Soup Kitchen
Solanus Casey Center
Solanus Guild | Life after hitting bottom
John Floyd Francis Karnicki hit bottom a year ago. Literally. He hadn't had a drink all day, had an alcoholic seizure at a rehabilitation facility and fell, cracking his head open. "I did my detox in a coma in Detroit Receiving Hospital," he says. "They didn't think I was going to make it."
Karnicki, 42, says he started drinking at 11, tending bar at family functions by the age of 7. "My family has a tradition of alcoholism. Both of my parents were alcoholics. My mother died sober. My father did not, unfortunately."
He had entered the rehabilitation facility after losing his job as a clerk at a party store, losing his alcoholic girlfriend, and was on the verge of losing his apartment above a liquor store. Karnicki says he remembers thinking he could detox on his own he'd done it plenty of times. He learned otherwise.
After his recovery, he found out his seizure happened because he'd been drinking so much for so long that "when my body didn't receive the alcohol, it shut down."
Karnicki heard about the ROPE program through addiction counselor Bro. Ed Conlin, a member of Servants of the Word, an ecumenical missionary brotherhood.
The first Saturday in May he volunteered baking and left knowing he would "jump at the chance to be part of ROPE." He's been a part of it since June.
"I know it's not as difficult as getting a job right out of prison, but putting on an application that I just came out of rehab isn't a real high selling point."
"Bro. Ray, he wants my recovery to come first," Karnicki says. "The ROPE program allows me to work my recovery and have a job and a place to live. That's my foundation right now. I wouldn't have that any place else.
"If I didn't have ROPE, I would have gone back to the same neighborhood, the same job, the same friends and I would have ended with the same result as last time. This gives me a whole new set of tools to use and it's like a security blanket. You are more safe and secure having that support. We always know we can talk to each other about everything."
"A justice issue"
Bro. Stadmeyer says the reason he gives ex-cons and addicts a chance is "because God gives them a chance. And that's where Jesus would be going to the people struggling the most to get it right."
The program addresses "a justice issue. I think really it's a healing ministry. In some ways they are being healed through their self-esteem and in relationships, definitely.
"To come down on a Saturday and see the different groups of people here, folks from the suburbs volunteering with these guys, it's a Eucharist in a way. It's a sharing. They become a part of each other's lives. Week after week."
One of the reasons ROPE works is because of the volunteers, Bro. Stadmeyer insists. There was no initial plan for the program "it just evolved." St. Philomena Parish in Detroit was one of the first to invite them to sell baked goods. "They have been a godsend and have agreed to give us one year of service," Bro. Stadmeyer says of the volunteers who help every week wrapping baked goods and working in the kitchen.
Others, such as Georgia Kingsley, got involved after finding out about ROPE when baked goods were sold in November at her parish. The member of St. Joan of Arc Parish in St. Clair Shores has been at the soup kitchen every Saturday since, except for vacation. "It's opened a whole new group of people I wouldn't have met if I hadn't taken the risk." Her prayer life has changed as well in that "I think it's less selfish. I'm praying for more people. The guys who have separated themselves from the program well, I pray for them more than my own needs."
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The mouth-watering assortment of hand-made baked goods include breads, pies, rolls and cookies.
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A young customer at St. Hugo of the Hills Church, Bloomfield Hills, chats with Bro. Ray Stadmeyer, OFM Cap. | | Lasting influences
Karnicki and Collins say their lives have been changed in many ways thanks to the influence of Bro. Stadmeyer and Bro. Jerry Smith, executive director of the Capuchin Soup Kitchens.
"I never prayed before for God's help with my alcoholism," says Karnacki, a lifelong Catholic. "It's like I was trying to hide it from God like He didn't know I was an alcoholic." These days, he says, he greets the day on his knees "asking for guidance and assistance" and ends each evening on his knees "thanking Him for guidance and for learning something new each day. It's not always something new I learned in the kitchen, but with my behavior. It's not an easy road. But it's the right one."
Collins says part of his life plan these days is learning to live more like Bro. Stadmeyer and Bro. Smith.
"I've seen Bro. Ray stop his car and get out to show compassion to someone on the streets. They don't just talk about it. They do it. I started watching their habits," he adds.
"Bro. Ray is up early, picks us up on time, is always polite, recycles and there's not waste," he says. "They've made me think about community more. I've read abut St. Francis and what his life was about, helping the disenfranchised, those who have fallen through the cracks of society, and imitating Jesus Christ," Collins says.
After spending so much time with the Capuchins, and Sundays at so many diverse parishes, Collins says his next step is to become Catholic. His daughter and granddaughter, who he now is in contact with, are Catholic. He stops at pondering life as a Capuchin brother, however. "Someday I'd like to have a wife," he says and laughs.
"With this program, I have an opportunity to do something positive. I know it's not easy for a person to forgive another person with my type of background but all I can do is show by example."
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