Seattle Archdiocese

Two people with long histories of volunteer leadership in a variety of causes were named recipients last month of the 2009 Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen Humanitarian Award, sponsored by Catholic Community Services of Western Washington.

Helen M. Jolly of Holy Rosary Parish in Edmonds and Jim Burns of St. Mary Parish in Seattle will receive the annual award in separate celebrations at their parishes. Named in honor of Seattle’s archbishop from 1975 to 1991, who is now retired and living in his native Montana, the award recognizes Catholics who provide outstanding faith-based service to poor and vulnerable people in Western Washington and who advocate for changes in the systems that cause human suffering. The award is a glass trophy.

Both recipients said they were honored and humbled by the award while noting there are many other deserving candidates.

And the pastors of the two recipients said both are prayerful people and regular participants at Mass.

Active in parish and SU
Jolly has been active in her parish, at her alma mater Seattle University, and with the annual St. Martin’s golf tourney, which raises funds for Catholic Housing Services’ emergency shelters and housing.

A member of Holy Rosary since 1973, she was one of the primary workers in the funding drive to build the present church, was parish council president, was active with Stephen Ministry and with Human Life of Washington, and for the past decade has coordinated the Christmas “Giving Tree” project that provides more than 600 gifts annually to people in need. She also is active in the parish quilting group, which donates quilts to the parish auctions and to premature babies at Stevens Hospital. She is a member of the Sno-King Serra Club, which promotes vocations to the priesthood and religious life.

“In her own unassuming way, [she] has achieved an amazing amount of good for others,” wrote Mary Bartholet, one of her nominators.

She “has a very generous heart and works very hard on behalf of the poor and marginalized of our community,” wrote Holy Rosary Pastor Father Kenneth Haydock in his nomination.
At Seattle University “she is directly responsible for helping to raise millions of dollars” for the school, Bartholet said. Among other efforts at SU, Jolly and her husband, John, donated the start-up money to get the campaign off the ground for the now renowned Chapel of St. Ignatius on campus. While a member of the Board of Regents from 1998 to 2008, she served on several committees that raised funds for scholarships and capital improvement projects, the new student center and library renovation among them. To fulfill a dream of her late husband’s, she organized a fundraising effort to commission the Statue of the El Salvador Martyrs that stands in front of the Pigott Building on campus.

Golf tourney big fundraiser
She is one of the founders of the St. Martin’s golf tournament and for the past 17 years has devoted thousands of volunteer hours as the tourney’s co-coordinator. “The past few years we’ve raised over $150,000 each year,” she says of the tourney, held each August at Harbour Point in Mukilteo.

A mother of three, Jolly traces her bent for volunteerism back to the birth of her first child.
“I was home with the baby, and I was going stir crazy,” she said. So she became involved with the Association for Catholic Childhood, which provides funding and advocacy for children and families. She later served as the board’s president and treasurer, and started the association’s Archbishop Connolly Circle when she moved to Edmonds.

“It’s a distinct honor,” she said of being named a recipient of the Archbishop Hunthausen Humanitarian Award. He is “a very humble and holy man, and to be given the award in his name is really something.”

A date to present her award has not yet been set.

Award stirs memories
Burns, a longtime church fundraiser who operated his own consulting firm, served under Archbishop Hunthausen as the archdiocesan director of development from 1981 to 1991. He said it was an emotional moment for him to receive an award named after a man he considers his spiritual leader and “in many ways a father figure.”

Though the 1980s saw some difficult times, with the Vatican visitation of Archbishop Hunthausen’s ministry, and with the archbishop withholding a portion of his taxes in protest of nuclear weapons proliferation, the Annual Catholic Appeal “continued to increase moneywise and donorwise all of those ten years,” Burns said. “The way he lived, he taught me what it means to be a Christian,” he said of the archbishop. “He taught me to serve [in the spirit] of Jesus’ words that ‘I’m in your midst as one who serves.’ He demonstrated that for me and really inspired me to continue.”

Like the archbishop, Burns refused to pay the portion of his taxes that went for nuclear armament, so the IRS garnished his wages. He also protested with the archbishop and others against nuclear weapons through the Ground Zero peace movement based at Bangor, Wash., and was arrested approximately eight times for civil disobedience and trespass, spending two days in jail.

He was a co-founder of the CHANNEL Program, a Catholic leadership formation program for young adults that trained 450 people over its 27-year history. It was in helping CHANNEL pay the bills that he discovered his fundraising talents.

Walked with Native Americans
Burns went on to use those skills as executive director of the Chief Seattle Club, which provides a safe and sacred place to urban Native Americans. In addition to raising funds and overseeing the building of their new $6-million center that opened in 2006, Burns was a compassionate companion to the Native people and walked with them “through their journeys of addiction, poverty and suffering,” wrote Barbara Guzzo, one of Burns’ nominators.

Burns, who now assists at the Catholic Seaman’s Club in Seattle, is tentatively scheduled to receive his award at the 9:30 a.m. Sunday Mass on Feb. 21 at St. Mary Church. He said it will be a celebration of “all who serve others to make this a better world.”

St. Mary Parish called upon his skills in 2008 when the parish food bank was in crisis after its director resigned and two of the three staffers were on sick leave. Burns became the bank’s interim director for a small stipend, and within months had restructured the board, recruited new members, held a successful search for a new director and organized an annual Harvest Dinner that raised twice the funds as previous efforts, said the parish’s Parochial Vicar Father Tony Haycock and Pastoral Coordinator Tricia Wittmann-Todd in their letter of nomination.

“He teaches that giving money to a worthy cause is more than ensuring that someone is fed, housed or clothed,” they said. “It is a way to enter into life with others and with the world.”
Burns’ work in social justice included service with the Pax Christi peace movement, including three years on the national board during the 1980s. He also served on the board of directors of the Foundation for Self Sufficiency in Central America and remains active as a consultant. He has made several visits to El Salvador, working with communities as they established zones of peace following the civil war. He once drove the 4,500 miles from Seattle to El Salvador to deliver a truck and its cargo of donated goods.