Name
Horton, George, 1945- (Interviewee)
Greenfield, Susan C (Interviewer)
Title
Oral history interview with George Horton, 2020
Abstract
George Horton begins the interview with a description of New York Catholic Charities' Life Skills Empowerment Program (often styled the Education Outreach Program, or EOP). He discusses how it works and muses on the power of storytelling. He then begins telling his own life story with recollections of his childhood in a working class Irish community in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. This includes memor ies of his education, his love of baseball and football, recollections of his parents, the impact of their eventual divorce, the prevalence of alcohol in the community, and the prominence of General Electric in the neighborhood. He discusses his experiences with the Catholic Church as a youth, including his experiences as an altar boy and the clerical sexual abuse he experienced around the age of eight. He describes his struggles with alcohol and his decision to quit drinking after the death of his mother in 1978. He also discusses other matters that weighed on him including the culture of toughness of Pittsfield and the end of a relationship while he was at Fordham University. He describes discovering liberation theology and joining New York Catholic Charities in the 1980s. He describes the 1988 City Hall vigil for ending homelessness. He also speaks further about faith, the human condition, and storytelling. He analyzes his complex relationship with the Catholic Church, which has been a source of inspiration and harm
Collection Name
Homelessness and Healing oral history collection
Subjects
Homeless persons--New York (State); Homeless persons--Services for--New York (State); Church work with the homeless; Storytelling--Psychological aspects; Liberation theology; Alcoholism; Pittsfield (Mass.) Social conditions; Horton, George, 1945-; Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York
Format
oral histories
Genre
Interviews
Date
2020
Physical Description
34 pages
Note (Biographical)
George Horton was born in 1945, and he grew up in an Irish Catholic neighborhood in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. As a youth, Horton excelled at sports and school and was active in his church as an altar boy. He also experienced an abiding fear that his parents would divorce, which they eventually did, and he experienced clerical sexual abuse around the age of eight. He attended undergrad at Holy Cross College and upon graduating, joined the US Army. After that, he attended law school at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1973. In the following years, he worked a variety of jobs including a VISTA college program for inmates at the Berkshire House of Corrections and a State of New York program for developmentally disabled persons. By the end of the 1970s, he was pursuing a PhD in the philosophy program at Fordham University. Throughout this period, he was developing an alcohol program that peaked when he was taking care of his dying mother. When she passed in 1978, he decided to make a change and got sober. Inspired by liberation theology, Horton began working with New York Catholic Charities (NYCC) in 1981, initially in the foster care division. In 1986, he became the director of NYCC's Ministry to the Homeless and Hungry. This work brought him into contact with the Interfaith Assembly on Homelessness and Housing, with which NYCC formed the Education Outreach Program (EOP). In the course of over thirty years with the EOP, Horton has heard over 500 life stories
Note
Interviewed by Susan Greenfield on March 5, 2020
Note (Provenance)
Susan Celia Greenfield, Gift, 2021
Language
English
Library Location
Columbia Center for Oral History, Columbia University
Browse Location’s Digital Content
Catalog Record
16911976
Also In
Oral History Archives at Columbia
Persistent URL
https://dx.doi.org/10.7916/9h3d-nh06
Related URLs
Available digital content for this interview.