The Rev. Edward Rooney left Ireland for the United States in 1962 - and landed in the middle of history.
Back then, he was a 20-something Roman Catholic priest. The seminary he had just graduated from served the English-speaking world, so he knew that he would be going to a parish where there was no language barrier.
Rooney, however, wound up in Montgomery, Ala., where he confronted a more insidious barrier: Jim Crow.
"I got to know some men in the seminary who were going to Alabama, and it sounded alright to me," said Rooney, who is now pastor at St. Luke's Catholic Church in Middleburg. "We had heard about the bus riders and the shootings and Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. and what happened to him in St. Augustine. ... That was in all of our papers [in Ireland]."
Rooney's parish, City of St. Jude, played a pivotal role in tearing down this barrier.
The all-black parish was the staging ground for the thousands of civil rights protesters who would march from Selma to Montgomery on March 21, 1965. The marchers stayed at the complex overnight before completing their third attempt to make it to the state Capitol on March 25.
Rooney, now 72, witnessed the triumph and tragedy of those times. And while he was driven to the priesthood because he wanted to help people, his experiences during the civil rights era solidified his commitment to battling inequality and injustice.
"It was there in Montgomery, Ala., when I first experienced this thing called segregation with my kids," Rooney said. "My mother came up for a visit one time, and she wanted to go to a drive-in movie. We had no drive-in movies in Ireland.
"So there was a young girl in the parish, Lillie Wright. So me and my mother asked her, 'How about going to the movies with us?' " And she said, 'No I can't.' That was because all the drive-in movies were segregated."
Seeing his parishioners endure those kinds of indignities made Rooney even more anxious to assist the marchers. His students, in fact, were so ready for change that they had begun wearing buttons with the acronym GROW, for Get Rid of Wallace.
George Wallace was Alabama's governor at the time and had gained notoriety for his slogan, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."
So Rooney jumped in.
"We had about 40,000 people who came through our campus," Rooney said. "They were staying in the gym; they were staying in the school; they were staying in the rectory; they were staying in tents on the ground. And I was there looking at the whole thing."
There was also a platform built for what would be known as the "Stars of Freedom Rally." That rally featured appearances by Harry Belafonte, Mahalia Jackson and composer Leonard Bernstein.
Rooney said he ran into some of them in the doorway of the church. He also met Andrew Young and Ralph Abernathy. But the most memorable person he encountered was Viola Liuzzo, a white Detroit homemaker and mother of five who was murdered by Ku Klux Klansmen.
Rooney said he and another priest had climbed up the church tower to look over the campus grounds. It was there he met Liuzzo.
"The meeting did not last too long, because we talked very, very briefly. She was a concerned woman, very sociable," Rooney said. "But she made the statement when she looked out, that 'Somebody is going to get hurt before this is over.'
"And she died. She died that night."
Rooney said the parish - which is now a historic district - did suffer some retribution. Suppliers cut them off for a while. But he said it would have suffered more in the eyes of history had it not helped the marchers.
"It was the injustice, it was the people with the power who were hurting the people without the power, and the fact that the opportunities were not available for the black students then," he said.
After spending two more years in Alabama, Rooney was sent to Florida. He was in Fort Walton Beach in 1968 when Martin Luther King Jr. was slain.
"We had a sympathy march ... right after Martin Luther King died, we joined a small group of marchers," Rooney said. "A good friend of mine, who was with the FBI, we saw him in the car, shooting pictures of the marchers ...
"So maybe I'm on file with the FBI," he said, with a laugh.
Rooney, who has been in Northeast Florida since 1969, said the civil rights movement helped shape him by giving him a chance to put his beliefs into practice, something he continues to do.
Today his parish participates in the Campaign For Human Development, a movement led by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that works to help alleviate poverty by helping poor people become more self-sufficient. Rooney's church also runs a medical clinic and holds regular food drives.
Yet perhaps the thing that inspires people the most are Rooney's stories about witnessing the power that comes when courageous people, guided by their consciences, join together to create positive change.
At least that's what Melanie Love, a junior high language arts teacher at Annunciation Catholic School, believes. In an e-mail, she described Rooney as one of the "quiet heroes who selflessly sacrifices every single day to create peace and promote goodness."
"I was doing a unit with the students on 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' and Father [Rooney] came in, and the kids were asking him all kinds of questions," Love said. "I wanted them to see someone who was, flesh and blood, part of that movement."
tonyaa.weathersbee@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4251