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ImmaComm
Building & Informing Our Community
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A publication of ImmaCare Inc.
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Turn a vision into reality! To learn how you can join our Board of Directors, contact Teresa Wierbicki:
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ImmaCare's 2019 Annual Report, Reflections, is now available online.
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A Message from our Board President
I joined the ImmaCare board in 2001, having just come off a term as board president for another Hartford nonprofit. At that time, ImmaCare was “The Immaculate Conception Shelter & Housing Corporation.” Board meetings were held on the second floor of the Victorian-era rectory house located next to the former church. The plot across from the church where our 50-unit project-based apartment building Casa de Francisco now sits was then an empty lot, littered with trash, empty liquor bottles, and used needles.
Like it does for everything, time for our organization marched on. Soon after I joined the board, the rectory burned down one winter night. I was there, stepping through the slush and icy water and over fire hoses, snaking across Park Street. The image of the burned skeleton of the once beautiful building is etched in my memory.
Later, we built Casa de Francisco and we changed our name.
Regardless, throughout the agency’s history the constant has been the shelter, located in the basement of the church. Little changed in the space for more than 30 years. Ask anyone who has spent time in the basement space and they’ll bring up the stone foundation walls, the concrete floors, low ceiling, steel columns and aging bathrooms.
Today, the basement, and the former church space upstairs, is being reborn as part of a complete renovation that is not only bringing the building up to modern design standards, construction and code, but also reshaping the organization’s goals and objectives in these changing times.
The irony is that the rebirth of the church into a modern shelter and office space wasn’t going to happen. I know because I was there. Click to continue reading...
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Keep ImmaCare in mind as you begin your holiday shopping. Click HERE to set ImmaCare as your default AmazonSmile charity and Amazon will donate 0.5% of your purchases to ending homelessness!
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Continuing our Founder's Legacy
ImmaCare Inc.’s beginnings in 1981 stem from a church ministry of the former Immaculate Conception Church which then owned the church in which we today operate. Fr. James Donagher, pastor at the time, founded this ministry with a devoted group of parishioners of the church. After serving Hartford from the Immaculate Conception Church for 11 years, Fr. Donagher stepped down from his role, but his support to what would become known as ImmaCare would not stop there.
Fr. Donagher founded the Saturday Sandwich program in 2012 while serving at Our Lady of Sorrows in Hartford. Along with a group of parishioners, Father Donagher went out early every Saturday morning to shop for and prepare lunches to distribute to the shelter he once founded in the basement of the Immaculate Conception Church.
Two years after starting the Saturday Sandwich program, Fr. Donagher was greeted by a lovely couple at Our Lady of Sorrows mass in 2014. This couple attended mass after they heard from a fellow parishioner that they shared the last name of one of the priests, Fr. Donagher. Sure enough, Seamus & Lorraine Donagher turned out to be long-lost cousins of Fr. Donagher and from that day, their friendship flourished. Though this friendship was limited with Fr. Donagher’s passing in 2016, he left a legacy that is proudly being carried on by his cousin-in-law Lorraine and fellow parishioners, Julio, Nidia, Rosa, John, and Grizelda. Lorraine reflected on her time with Father Donagher, “…his kindness and generosity of spirit never wavered while he was ill… I believe Father Jim’s legacy will always be caring for the poor and those disenfranchised. He was a remarkable individual who was completely selfless.”
As ImmaCare prepares to reopen the shelter, the Saturday Sandwich program is looking forward to continuing their services. Lorraine shared, “Although we have had a hiatus in the program due to the pandemic and the renovations at the shelter, Julio, John, Nidia, Grizelda and I are anxious to continue its mission as I’m sure he [Fr. Donagher] would want.”
What a blessing it is to watch Lorraine carry on an inspiring legacy of her long-lost cousin and our cherished and missed, Father James Donagher.
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We had the pleasure of visiting with Father Donagher in the fall of 2010. He said of his time with the agency:
"There was no vision per se; we just didn’t want to let anyone else suffer like that man did... I received so much, yet gave so little: a roof, some food, and a hope that tomorrow would come. Today, Immaculate is embarking on an extraordinary journey. What once was a Shelter run in the basement of an old church, is a full service agency…”
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Teresa A. Wierbicki
Director of Strategic Development
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