In the late 1930s, a young Sue Corrado would observe as her father joyfully wrote checks for Catholic Charities of Oregon.
In the 1950s, Tessie Niedermeyer would have her high-school-age daughters Ruth and Jeannie organize ebullient annual Christmas parties for the residents of Rosemont School for troubled girls, a Catholic Charities program.
As a girl, Barbie Brown saw her mother live so selflessly that by the 1980s it became second nature for Barbie to join and organize a group that met monthly to support Catholic Charities – and had a good time at it.
Sue, Ruth, Jeannie and Barbie have continued their steadfast support for Catholic Charities. As the agency concludes its 90th anniversary observances this fall, these generous spirits and their families have sustained our mission for nearly a century. They came together to explain why.
Sue, daughter of our co-founder, declares that “Catholic Charities is just the mainstay of people who desperately need help.”
This sentiment echoes through generations, as demonstrated by Ruth and Jeannie, who learned from their mother that even those facing the greatest hardships deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.
All four agree on a profound point: Happiness is linked to generosity.
“You can’t be happy without reaching out,” says Barbie. “You can’t be happy if you’re self-focused. You have to be beyond yourself to have some peace.”
“There are a lot of people who are unhappy, and it’s got to be too much emphasis on the self,” Ruth says. “The happiest people are the people who give.”
From the 1930s, when Sue’s father Edwin Mayer joyfully wrote checks to help charter our organization, to the present day, families like the Corrados, Niedermeyers, Van Hoomissens, Santoses, Browns and so many others have woven generosity into the fabric of our community. Their legacy of giving has created a warm resilient shelter that has comforted countless individuals in need over nine decades.
As we conclude our 90th anniversary, we stand at the loom of the future, ready to weave new patterns of hope and help. The compassion from supporters like you is boundless, With every thread of generosity strengthening our shared tapestry of support for those most vulnerable among us.
‘It made him so happy’
“It made him so happy to give to charity,” Sue Corrado says of her father, Edwin Mayer. “And Catholic Charities just was right up his alley — to do it right locally, instead of writing checks all over the country.”
Edwin Mayer
Mayer not only founded the seminal Oregon company View-Master but helped charter Catholic Charities in 1933.
In addition to watching her dad write checks, Sue remembers her mother and grandmother feeding unemployed men during the Great Depression.
“It was very common to find someone at your front door looking for food,” she says. “The men would come in on the train, and we weren’t that far from the train tracks. My mother and my grandmother always had soup and sandwiches ready.”
In later years, Sue and her financier husband Al carried on that loving generosity by strongly supporting Catholic Charities. “I think it was in our DNA,” she says. “Everything Catholic Charities does, we are behind 100%.”
The Corrados gave a major gift for the Catholic Charities headquarters building in 2010. “They needed to spread out and have facilities that were more available to more people,” Sue says.
Al and Sue Corrado in 1998
The Corrados value the agency’s work on affordable housing and on welcoming refugees, a program that started about the time Sue’s brothers returned from fighting World War II.
Sue is gratified that Catholic Charities serves so many seniors, in addition to young families.
“Catholic Charities is probably one of the most prolific helpers,” she says. “The meaning of Catholic Charities, to me, is that catholic is universal. And it has taken in so many different facets of care and facilitating things for people to be able to have a better life.”
A young Edwin Mayer
Sue says her dad would be proud. “I’m sure he’s looking down from heaven,” she explains, “and is very, very happy.”
Lives of service
Barbie Brown’s mother nurtured in her a life of service.
Barbie Brown with her mother, Betty Duffy.
“Mom was always there; she was just one of those people who did everything for everybody,” Barbie says. “The idea of doing something for others appealed to all of us Catholic girls.”
Starting in the mid-1970s, Ruth and Barbie were leading parts of a group that formed to create a Catholic Charities benefit dinner. It was hosted by banker John Elorriaga at the magnificent U.S. Bank building downtown. Then came ongoing social and educational gatherings led by the team of Catholic women who wanted to elevate Catholic social ministry.
Phil and Barbie Brown greet Sen. Mark Hatfield at the 2002 Catholic Charities dinner.
At monthly meetings they held discussions and brought items for families in need like diapers. Hearkening back to the Tessie Niedermeyer days, the women also held Christmas parties for needy children.
Barbie thinks often about how future generations will support the people served by Catholic Charities.
“Catholic Charities serves not just Catholics but all people who are in need,” she says. “I think that would appeal to the younger people because I think the younger generation does want to make this world a better place.”
Phil and Barbie Brown make the front page of the Catholic Sentinel in 2002.
‘Not just for Catholics, but for everyone’
Ruth Van Hoomissen and Jeannie Santos are two of the 15 children born to Bernard and Tessie Niedermeyer, part of another prominent Oregon Catholic family.
The women’s grandfather, Joseph F. Niedermeyer, arrived in Oregon by wagon in 1891, was a charter member of the Portland’s Knights of Columbus, and was a Portland barber for five decades.
George and Ruth Van Hoomissen meet with Archbishop Francis George and Dennis Keenan in 1996.
Bernard and Tessie wed in 1920, and doubtless were major Catholic Charities backers when the agency was founded in 1933.
Bernard founded a wood products company, Niedermeyer Martin, along with Linus Martin, Tessie’s twin brother.
Irish-born Tessie, a graduate of Portland’s Immaculata Academy, was a prominent member of service clubs, a world traveler and highly respected dispenser of wisdom and values, including generosity. Her children never forgot.
“She’s been the guiding moral code in my life,” Ruth says of her mother.
Tessie would tell her daughters that the unwed teen mothers at Catholic Charities’ Rosemont School were dealing with traumas and deserved to be treated like royalty. During parties for the girls hosted at the Niedermeyer home, a great trunk of costumes would emerge so all the girls could dress up like beautiful desert princesses or stunning queens from the steppes of Asia.
The Niedermeyer girls learned a lot about considering others from their mother Tessie.
Ben and Tessie Niedermeyer hold a personal audience with Pope John XXIII.
“You’d say ‘I want to have a slumber party. Can I have six people over all night?’” recalls Jeannie. “She’d say, ‘Well, what about the other girls in the class? I wouldn’t hurt anybody’s feelings for the world.’ She didn’t care if 22 came and brought their sleeping bags.”
“My mother was always very sensitive about people suffering, particularly the homeless,” Jeannie adds. “And Catholic Charities was out in front helping the homeless in different ways…. Catholic Charities emerged in Portland as one of the prime agencies not just for Catholics but for everyone.”
Jeannie wants more people to know how far Catholic Charities has come in affordable housing, much of it with supportive services included.
Jeannie, who spent decades in the nation’s capital working as a grant administrator, says the public also needs to understand the “fantastic” refugee program better. “The assistance that’s given them is really helping them to integrate and become productive members of the community. We all benefit from that.”
Ruth points out that Catholic Charities of Oregon was very early in the game in creation of tiny home villages. Kenton Women’s Village is seen as a model of the genre.
The Niedermeyer family at the table, 1958. Ruth is front left in black. Jeannie front and center.
“Catholic Charities is on board for what’s happening today not yesterday,” Ruth says. “They are attuned to the urgency of the moment.”
Catholic Charities “is an extension of that Catholic community that we all knew as children, and I think it spoke to a part of our hearts that’s always yearning to be a part of the larger family,” says Ruth.