MONROE — Leo Moore takes no credit. Instead, the 92-year-old talks about the goodness of his late wife. Most of all, he is thankful to God for the life he has lived.
A faithful member of Monroe’s St. Mary of the Valley Catholic Church, Moore was recently named “the Top Hat of St. Vincent de Paul.” The award, given to Moore by the North Sound District Council of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, is the highest honor bestowed locally by the Roman Catholic organization that serves the poor.
Jim Kehoe, the North Sound council’s CEO, said Moore has been a St. Vincent de Paul volunteer “a little over 60 years.”
St. Vincent de Paul has been active in Snohomish County since the 1920s, but Kehoe said the group here wasn’t separate from the Seattle council until the 1970s.
“Leo was at the first meeting, and every meeting from then on,” Kehoe said. “He’s such a humble guy, and has been involved in so many different things.”
Moore is as engaged in his church as he is with St. Vincent de Paul. He attends daily Mass, where he serves as a lector, and prays the Rosary often. “I sleep with a Rosary in my hand,” he said.
“Leo is just one of those amazing guys. Every parish has one,” said the Rev. Phillip Bloom, pastor of St. Mary of the Valley. Calling Moore an “old-fashioned gentleman,” the priest said “he does the things most needed — takes Communion to the sick and makes visits to the poor. He’s a disciple of the Lord.”
Like Moore, Bridget Shinnick is a St. Vincent volunteer at St. Mary of the Valley. The group gets about 60 calls a month from people seeking help, “all the way to Sultan and Index,” Shinnick said. “It’s not an easy job.”
St. Vincent de Paul operates thrift stores in Everett, Monroe and Lynnwood. It provides holiday food baskets to families needing them. A former manager of the Everett thrift shop, Moore helped establish the Snohomish County St. Vincent group, which now has more than 300 volunteers.
It was 1978 when the Society of St. Vincent de Paul’s Snohomish County District Council was incorporated as a nonprofit. Today, the Everett-based North Sound District Council includes St. Vincent de Paul groups associated with Catholic churches as far away as Bellingham and Anacortes.
Moore lived in Bothell in the 1970s and represented St. Brendan Catholic Church on the St. Vincent council. In those early days, women weren’t part of local St. Vincent activities. It was Moore who made a progressive proposal: include women as volunteers.
Bert Cronin was president of the local St. Vincent de Paul in 1977 when Moore raised that possibility. An Everett real estate developer who helped start Everett’s St. Mary Magdalen Parish, Cronin died in 2010. Minutes from the St. Vincent group’s meeting on April 28, 1977, include this: “The need for women to work on the council was brought to the meeting’s attention by Leo Moore. The council voiced no objection to such a move.”
Moore’s move to include women “set in motion what this organization has become — all people helping all people,” said Carla Laird, executive assistant for St. Vincent de Paul’s North Sound District Council, in a statement announcing the Top Hat Award.
Moore said recently that his push to include women was less about the 1970s rise of feminism than about his wife Thelma’s generous example. “My wife was extremely giving. She was always there to help others — what we were put on this earth for. Thelma had a heart bigger than this church,” he said as he sat on a pew at St. Mary of the Valley. His wife died in 2007.
Both Iowa natives, Moore said he and his wife “worked our way west.” For 10 years, he was an office manager at St. Edward Seminary. The Kenmore facility that trained men for the Catholic priesthood closed in 1976. He also worked for Associated Sand &Gravel in Everett and had other jobs.
Moore remembers home visits to deliver St. Vincent de Paul food baskets, “in all kinds of weather and after all kinds of tragedies.”
“I’m honored and blessed, and will continue to do it,” he said. “God has been good to me.”
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; jmuhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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