Oral history interview with George Horton, 2020

Biographical Note

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

Scope and Contents

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 memories 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

Subjects

• Alcoholism.
• Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York.
• Church work with the homeless.
• Greenfield, Susan C., interviewer.
• Homeless persons--New York (State)--New York.
• Homeless persons--Services for--New York (State)--New York.
• Horton, George, 1945---Interviews.
• Interviews.
• Liberation theology.
• Oral histories (literary works)
• Pittsfield (Mass.)--Social conditions.
• Storytelling--Psychological aspects.

Access Conditions

Copyright by George Horton. The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York hold a non-exclusive license to enable library activities