The Reverend Hugh Charles X. Mulholland

News and Observer February 2001

By PATRICK M. O'NEILL

The roads to Greenville are familiar to me. Miles of scenic flat highways lined on both sides by beautiful fields. For more than two decades I have raveled those roads, often serving as the willing chauffeur to my dear friend, the Rev. Hugh Charles Xavier Mulholland, the Diocese of Raleigh Catholic priest who first brought me to Greenville on August 19, 1977.
Father Charlie, as he is affectionately known to countless friends, would fill those trips with hours of stimulating conversation that I couldn't get enough of -- peace, justice, unions, civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, you name it, Charlie would have a viewpoint that was compelling; a viewpoint that always gave preference to the oppressed. I realized immediately that Charlie marched to the beat of a different drummer.
Pulling into the parking lot of St. Gabriel Rectory on Greenville's West 5th  St. on that hot summer night almost 24 years ago was an experience that changed my life. I was 21 years old at the time, and that trip from my family home in Little Neck, Queens to Eastern North Carolina was like entering another world. The culture shock was nothing compared to the "Charlie shock."
After a short sleep that first night, Charlie had me up early. This time we were off to Chapel Hill for a meeting of the N.C. Civil Liberties Union. Charlie sat on the state board. Immediately Charlie started introducing me to scores of people who were doing important work for justice in a state not far removed from its segregationist past. I was astounded one morning over breakfast when I picked up the News & Observer to discover that Charlie had been among a group of prominent people who had met with Gov. James B. Hunt the previous day to urge the governor   to pardon the Wilmington 10. Charlie was quoted in the story. He had never mentioned the meeting prior to my reading about it in the N&O.
In Greenville, I would sometimes accompany Charlie to a Pitt County   NAACP meeting. We were usually the only whites there, but it was obvious that Charlie felt no discomfort -- and none was felt toward him. Charlie's ready smile and warm handshake always let people know they
were in the presence of a good and caring man -- indeed a holy man.
The rectory doorbell at St. Gabriel rang constantly. Children came for the
day-old donuts Charlie would pick up from a local bakery. The poor would come in search of help with a past-due bill.
Charlie told a story of a woman who said she needed some kerosene for her heater. When Charlie delivered the kerosene he discovered the woman had only a wood stove. She was probably planning to sell the kerosene. Charlie laughed it off. "God provides," Charlie once told me. Like the time he gave his last stash of cash to a beggar at his door.
Later that same day, a person showed up and gave Charlie an even larger donation to use as he saw fit.
Charlie was also well acquainted with the Catholic peace movement, a   movement that gained momentum during the Viet Nam War years, and later in its opposition to nuclear weapons and U.S. military intervention in Central America. Charlie was on a first-name basis with renowned activists such as Philip Berrigan and Elizabeth McAlister. I was starting to
meet people I had only read about in the New York Times, people who were on the cutting edge of the effort to save humanity from its own folly. More than once I drove Charlie to Washington D.C. for demonstrations at the Pentagon and the White House.
Later, when I received a federal prison sentence for civil disobedience,
Charlie came to see me in an Atlanta minimum security prison. In the visiting room, I playfully introduced this short, balding priest to guards and inmates as "the man who is responsible for where I am today."
When Charlie left Greenville to take over Mother of Mercy Catholic Church
down the road in Washington, his friends in Greenville roasted him. A cofounder of the Greenville Peace Committee, Charlie was a familiar sight at local demonstrations. At Greenville City Council meetings, Charlie was a regular, always fighting for the poor. At the roast, then-Greenville Mayor Percy Cox presented Charlie with a letter opener adorned with the City of Greenville seal. "We were going to give you the key to the city, but we were afraid you'd come back," Cox said as the audience roared.
As many people know, Charlie, now 79 years old, has been losing his memory with the onset of Alzheimer's Disease. For the past couple of years he has lived in an assisted living community in Raleigh. The Mulholland family decided to move Charlie, the oldest of seven children, to a nursing home in his native New York.
During his years in North Carolina, Charlie served parishes from
Jacksonville to Brevard. He even served a stint on the Diocese of Raleigh's mobile chapel that traveled the state's back roads making stops in small towns to introduce people to this then-unknown Catholic faith.
Charlie and I made one last trip to Greenville this month to see some old
friends. We had lunch at Lucille Gorham's home, just a few doors down from St. Gabriel. Lucille was Charlie's housekeeper and pastoral assistant for 10 years while he was in Greenville. After a hurried four-hour visit, Charlie and I got back into the car for the drive back to Raleigh. As we headed out of town on Highway 264, it occurred to me that this would be Charlie's final trip between Greenville and Raleigh. It would also be our last trip together. My chauffeuring services would no longer be needed.
Charlie quietly departed Raleigh Feb. 11 without fanfare. The humble priest who spent almost half a century of his life in tireless service to North Carolina is gone. In his homilies, Charlie always said the evidence of a person's fidelity to God can be measured by the number of friends
he or she has. I am proud to be counted among Charlie's friends. I will miss him dearly.
(Patrick O'Neill is cofounder of Raleigh's St. Martin de Porres Catholic
Worker House. Fr. Mulholland served as St. Martin House chaplain since it opened in 1991.)