Breezy Point Madonna — The rest of the story — Bringing it home

Where FEMA and DHS fear to tread, guess who sticks around…

The Breezy Point Madonna, still  standing after 100 homes burned to the ground, has become a place of faith.
By SAMUEL G.  FREEDMAN Published: November 16, 2012

As if all that loss were not loss enough, the  storm spared a few tormenting reminders of life before its arrival. In the  scorched shell of a cedar closet, screen windows stand neatly stacked. Three  rolls of paper towels sit on a pantry shelf, toasted as delicately brown as  cookout marshmallows.

So, yes, at the corner of Oceanside Avenue and  Gotham Walk, the house inherited by the elderly McNultys’ niece Regina after the  couple died, is a place of tragedy. It is also, astonishingly, a place of faith.  For the one part of the home to survive intact was a statue of the Virgin Mary  that Mary McNulty placed in her garden years ago. The statue is one of the only recognizable  remnants of the swath of Breezy Point where more than 100 homes burned to the  ground while a flood kept firefighters from reaching it.

Since the waters  withdrew early on Oct. 30, the image of the Breezy Point Madonna has reached the  nation, indeed the world, through vivid news photos. Pilgrims have come to leave  offerings: a bouquet of yellow roses, four quarters, a votive candle, a memorial  card for the victims of Sept. 11, a written admonition that healing begins with  acceptance.

Ellen Mathis Kail knelt at the shrine five  days after the catastrophe. She had spent 30 summers on Breezy Point and watched  her parents save for decades to buy a bungalow on Gotham Walk. She had been  married in the parish church, St. Thomas More, a few blocks away. Living in Denver, teaching fourth grade at  Saint Vincent de Paul, a Roman Catholic school, Ms. Kail had followed the grim  news of the storm’s approach. On Oct. 29, when she saw a message on Facebook  that said “Breezy Point burning,” she sent a text message to her childhood  friend, Meg Dolan. “Please, Meg,” she wrote, “before I tell my  parents, is there any chance this could be a very bad rumor?” Ms. Dolan sent a text back, “It’s all  devastation.”

The next morning, the teachers and students at  Saint Vincent de Paul began writing cards. Ms. Kail flew to New York with a bag  full of them on Nov. 2. Initially, she said, she had thought of having Ms. Dolan  or one of the parish priests give them to displaced families. But then, walking  through the wreckage along Gotham, she noticed the statue and laid the cards at  Mary’s feet. “I am a kid from Denver,” one boy wrote, “and  my teacher is Ellen. I love her accent, it’s funny. But I’m so sorry for your  homes. But God will make something good out of it and God will protect you Big  and Small. You Rock!”

Ms. Kail noticed a pot of violets outside  another destroyed house. Somehow the flowers were still alive. She moved the pot  beside the Madonna. “It was so bleak, so horrific,” Ms. Kail, 44,  said. “And I thought maybe if I left some color, some hope, it would brighten  someone’s day, just to think someone is praying for them.”

One of the first photographers on the scene,  Frank Franklin II of The Associated Press, reached the corner of Oceanside and  Gotham at 6 a.m. on Oct. 30. Winding through the fields of blackened  debris, he found himself transfixed by the statue of the Virgin Mary. Though  raised by Protestant parents, Mr. Franklin attended a Catholic high school and  he immediately perceived a deeper meaning. “It’s weird how I was drawn to it,” Mr.  Franklin, 40, recalled. “I’m not the most religious person in the world, but I  know what those images are. When I made that frame, I knew it would resonate  with people. What I couldn’t imagine was how much.”

Through his Twitter account, Mr. Franklin has  heard from people who saw his photo in print or online. “A wonderful image,” one  wrote on Twitter. Another wrote, “A symbol of faith.” By the afternoon of Nov.  16, a Google search for “Breezy Point Madonna” retrieved more than 400,000  results.

What happened spontaneously speaks to a larger  theme in Catholicism. According to Timothy Matovina, a theology professor at the  University of Notre Dame, the veneration of Mary, or Marian devotion, tends to  fall into three categories. One involves apparitions; the second concerns  statues associated with miracles in response to prayer; the third, as at Breezy  Point, centers on an image of Mary that survives in some extraordinary way. “In the midst of terrible tragedy, here’s a  holy image, a sacred image, that made it through,” Dr. Matovina said. “There’s a  sense you’ve been crushed, but not abandoned.”

Last week, Msgr. Michael J. Curran, the pastor  of St. Thomas More, stood before the statue. A retired firefighter standing  nearby surveying the remains of his home, greeted the monsignor, then nearly  broke into tears. “It will be a symbol of the suffering,” Monsignor Curran said of the statue, “but also of our rise from the ashes. It  will be a symbol of what we’ve been through but also of our resurrection. It  will be a reminder that for all the property we lost, God never left.”

E-mail: sgf1@columbia.edu