Jonah House

This is the last stop of the tour, but while it speaks to Philip Berrigan’s life after the Catonsville action, what of the rest of the Nine? 

David Darst died in a car accident in 1969, before he could serve his sentence for the Catonsville action. Mary Moylan, George Mische, and Daniel and Philip Berrigan chose to evade arrest and go underground to continue their protests. Philip Berrigan and George Mische were captured fairly quickly. Daniel Berrigan remained at large for several months, attending a protest event at Cornell University and popping up in several different places to speak and give interviews before he was caught in August of 1970. Mary Moylan went uncaptured for nearly a decade; she finally chose to surface and give herself up in 1979. In the end, though, they each served their jail time for the Catonsville action. 

Their lives went different ways, but the surviving members of the Catonsville Nine remained passionate activists. Daniel Berrigan settled in New York, where in addition to joining Philip with the Plowshares movement, he also ministered to AIDS victims. George Mische was a criminal justice and labor activist in Minnesota. Tom Lewis moved to Massachusetts, where he continued his work as an artist and activist, demonstrating against war, genocide and torture. When he wasn’t in jail for his activism, he also taught at the Worcester Art Museum. Thomas and Marjorie Melville became academics and studied Central and South America. John Hogan worked on public housing for the poor in Connecticut. Mary Moylan returned to work as a nurse, and was an advocate of the women’s rights movement.

Only two of the Nine are still living at this time: George Mische and Marjorie Melville. David Darst died in 1969, Mary Moylan in 1995, Philip Berrigan died in 2002, Tom Lewis and John Hogan died in 2008, Daniel Berrigan died in 2016, and Thomas Melville died in 2017.

Jonah House. Accessed November 1st 2020. http://www.jonahhouse.org/.

Julius, Marilyn. “Fire and Faith.” The Catonsville Nine File, 2005. http://c9.digitalmaryland.org/

Muller, Mary Anne and Anna Brown. The Plowshares Eight: Thirty Years On, Waging Nonviolence People Powered News & Analysis. September 9th 2010. Accessed November 1st 2020. https://wagingnonviolence.org/2010/09/the-plowshares-8-thirty-years-on/.

Peters, Shawn Francis. The Catonsville Nine: A Story of Faith and Resistance in the Vietnam Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.