TR in Loyola FOCUS: Saving Lives in Haiti
A STORY OF THE GLOBAL JESUIT NETWORK IN ACTION
LA_Focus_Spring_2010
Loyola FOCUS: Early Summer 2010
How a Loyola alumnus, a Loyola mom and a Detroit Province Jesuit were brought together by their Jesuit connections to serve on a team of medical “first responders” in the critical days and weeks after Haiti’s catastrophic quake
On January 11, 2010, William B. McNulty III ’95—a former Marine who served in the infantry and intelligence—was working in Washington, D.C., where he co-owns TitleTen, Inc., a national security-focused film production, development and consulting company.
Haitian-born Glenview resident Rosite Feteau Merentie was juggling motherhood (she is the parent of Loyola students Ramsley ’10 and Claudia ’12) and her work as a hospice nurse providing end-of-life care for terminally ill patients.
Br. James J. Boynton, S.J.—a Jesuit who has taught high school in India, Nepal, Cleveland and Detroit and served as vocation director for the Detroit Province—had arrived in Ouanaminthe, Haiti, nine days earlier to begin his latest assignment as director of the Jesuit-run St. Ignace school of Foi et Joie (Faith and Joy).
McNulty, Merentie and Boynton had never met. But, within a week, they would be united by their Jesuit connections to carry out a common humanitarian mission of unimaginable proportions.
The geological chain of events that brought these three strangers together began on January 12, when two tectonic plates beneath Haiti shifted and a section along the fault line where the two plates had been jammed together since 1751 jerked apart. The rupture released more than 250 years of pent-up pressure and generated a 7.0-magnitude earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince, the capital of Merentie’s Haitian homeland.
Within 24 hours, McNulty had received a call to action in the form of a Facebook post issued by his friend and fellow former Marine, Jake Wood:
***ATTENTION***
I am legitimately trying to find a way to get to Haiti
to help with the disaster relief. I think it will be possible to
fly into the Dominican Republic and cross the border over land.
IS ANYONE WILLING TO HELP?
Looking to fly out tomorrow red-eye and return
sometime next Tues. or Wed. Let me know.
Five minutes after reading the post, McNulty called his friend and said, “Jake, I’m in.”
“As a former Marine, I felt that I had some skills that would be useful,” McNulty explains today. “Basic combat lifesaving skills are taught to anyone who serves in the military, so I knew how to clean and dress wounds. And I was comfortable in austere environments with a lot of uncertainty.”
With no time to lose, Wood and McNulty spun into action. They formed an emergency response team with two Milwaukee firefighters and began formulating plans to travel independently, with private funding, to Haiti to aid in the medical relief operations taking place there. With these original four members, Team Rubicon was born.
Despite media reports of armed mobs in Port-au-Prince and advisories by the U.S. Department of Defense and the Red Cross not to proceed because the situation was too dangerous, the group remained undeterred. The team employed social media technology such as Facebook and Twitter to spread the word about Team Rubicon’s mission and raise cash via private donations to PayPal.
McNulty also enlisted the aid of an old family friend, Dr. Mauricio Consalter, who began assembling a medical team to rendezvous with Team Rubicon once a secure base of operations had been established in Port-au-Prince. In search of funding and contacts in Haiti, McNulty then emailed friends and family in the Loyola community. When McNulty’s uncle, Loyola Academy Vice President of Academic and Student Affairs David K. McNulty, received the email, he forwarded it to the Jesuits at Loyola University, who forwarded it on to Br. Boynton in Ouanaminthe, Haiti.
Br. Boynton was already at his computer when the email from Loyola University arrived. He’d been trying to assemble a medical team and arrange transportation for the six-hour drive to Port-au-Prince, but—given the lack of vehicles, fuel and phone service following the quake—it had been an exercise in frustration.
“I had just prayed St. Ignatius’ prayer for generosity and hit my email refresh key,” Boynton recalls, “and the forwarded email from William McNulty appeared in my inbox.”
Within 15 minutes, Br. Boynton had contacted McNulty and the two began to coordinate their relief efforts via Skype, an Internet video and voice service. Br. Boynton agreed to meet up with Team Rubicon at a prearranged point in Santo Domingo (the airport in Port-au-Prince had not yet been cleared for air traffic) and accompany them over the border and across the island to Port-au-Prince. Boynton, who had taken five weeks of Creole language instruction in preparation for his educational mission in Ouanaminthe, would also do his best to serve as a translator and guide for Team Rubicon. The Jesuit Novitiate in Port-au-Prince, with its gated courtyard, would serve as the base for the team’s operations.
Meanwhile, back in Illinois, Loyola mom Rosite Feteau Merentie had just received her own call to action.
“It was a text message from McNulty’s friend, Dr. Consalter, a physician I work with at Vitas Innovative Hospice Care,” she explains. “He was looking for medical professionals to join Team Rubicon and he knew I would be personally invested because of my roots in Haiti.”
Consalter’s text message was brief and to the point. “We hadn’t even spoken since the quake had happened,” Merentie recalls with a chuckle, “yet all the text message said was, ‘Are you ready? Let’s go.’”
Merentie didn’t need to know more. She simply texted back, “I’m ready. What time?”
Two days after Br. Boynton arrived in Port-au-Prince with Team Rubicon, Merentie boarded a donated United Airlines flight to Haiti with Dr. Consalter and a group of doctors, nurses and medical technicians from Illinois Masonic Hospital. Their arrival at the Jesuit Novitiate in Port-au-Prince marked the beginning of a medical and humanitarian mission that McNulty, Merentie, Boynton and the other members of Team Rubicon are not likely to forget.
More than a week had passed since the quake had toppled Haiti’s impoverished and ill-prepared capital city, killing 230,000 people, injuring 300,000 and leaving 1.2 million in need of emergency shelter. Yet, unbelievably, Team Rubicon was one of the first medical relief groups to mobilize.
“It was then that I felt that we had added a new paradigm for disaster response,” reflects McNulty today. “Because Team Rubicon was small and nimble, we were able to hit the ground running. And because our volunteers had medical, military and fire rescue experience, we were able to go out into the tent cities that had formed since the quake to perform field triage and treatment.”
On their first day out, the team members loaded their supplies into two Toyota trucks provided by the Jesuits and drove to a refugee camp, where they immediately began to set up a pharmacy and triage area.
Despite the news reports that she had seen, Merentie was unprepared for the sight of thousands of her fellow Haitians—dazed, hurt, hungry and homeless—with terrible wounds that had been left to fester for eight days.
“I cannot even describe what I saw,” says Merentie, her voice breaking. “The line of people in need of medical care stretched out as far as the eye could see. They took it upon themselves to triage their most badly wounded to the front of the crowd, and they were so grateful, so happy to see us. For a moment, I just stood there with tears rolling down my face.”
But tears wouldn’t help the wounded, so Merentie rolled up her sleeves, took a deep breath and “went into nursing mode.”
For the next 18 days, the members of Team Rubicon worked side by side, treating thousands of patients with internal injuries, crush wounds, amputations, infections, gangrene and compound fractures—fashioning casts from door and window frames and tree branches.
The team members stopped only for some much-needed sleep and the spiritual sustenance they derived from Br. Boynton’s daily prayer and reflection sessions. While the Illinois Masonic doctors performed surgeries, Br. Boynton and the other team members moved from camp to camp, cleaning and dressing wounds, treating dehydration and diarrhea and directing hungry Haitians to food sources.
Every so often, there were moments of true spirituality in the midst of what could only be described as abject misery.
“We were cleaning one woman’s wounds and the pain was agonizing,” says Merentie. “Br. Boynton, who was holding the woman’s hand, started singing to take her mind off of the pain—and everyone in the area began singing along with him to comfort her.”
By January 30, Team Rubicon had provided medical care for thousands of Haitians and saved countless lives. With the large humanitarian organizations up and running, Team Rubicon’s mission to “bridge the critical gap between large natural disasters and conventional aid response” in Haiti had been fulfilled. It was time to go home.
But McNulty, Merentie and Br. Boynton still had promises to keep.
After the Haiti quake, McNulty and Wood formalized Team Rubicon as a 501(c)(3) organization. The new non-profit—comprised of volunteer doctors, firefighters, medics, nurses, physician assistants and military veterans who “believe that inaction is not an option”—will continue to serve at disaster sites around the world.
Merentie and her brother Wilfred Feteau, have formed the Organization for Haitian Development and Progress (OHDEPRO), a nonprofit focusing on health and education programs for Haitians.
And Br. Boynton? He’ll be staying on in Port-au-Prince for the foreseeable future. “I have been working with volunteers from H.E.A.R.T 9/11 as they train Haitians on the safe demolition and restoration of buildings,” he reports. “Going forward, I will also be facilitating the efforts of volunteers from International Samaritan, a Jesuit service organization. Our mission now is to help the people of Haiti rebuild.”
Find out more about Team Rubicon at www.tearubiconusa.org and International Samaritan at www.intsamaritan.org. To learn more about the Organization for Haitian Development and Programs, please contact Wilfred Feteau at feteauw1@comcast.net.
