by Jessica Easthope

Father John McMillan is one of the last priests to enter 7:45 morning prayer at the Passionist Monastery in Jamaica Estates.

After all, you get a pass on your 100th birthday.

“I never expected to become a living legend,” Father McMillan said.

But it’s not Father McMillan’s age that’s legendary. It’s how he’s lived, as a priest, a drug and alcohol abuse counselor, a nursing student, and a WWII Air Force navigator.

Father McMillan said he doesn’t have any big secrets — making it to this age is purely God’s will, noting that he beat colon cancer at age 90. 

“In that 10 years, as late as it seems to be, I’ve come closer to the Lord, learned about the Lord and gained more feeling about helping people than I did before,” Father McMillan said.

The day before his birthday, his family and his brother priests held a big celebration in his honor. So far, his 100th birthday has been his favorite.

“It was tremendous, all my relatives turned out, people I hadn’t seen in years, Father Bill set it up so beautifully.”

Monastery Rector Father Bill Murphy said it’s almost ironic that the oldest Passionist priest keeps everyone else up to date on the latest news.

Every day after breakfast, Father McMillan heads to the library to grab his favorite newspapers, among them the New York Times — and The Tablet. 

“A great conversationalist, what’s going on in the news, the whole magazine and newspaper,” Father Murphy said. “He raises the level of our conversation frequently, I would say.” 

In many ways, Father McMillan said,  he still feels like an obedient soldier.

“We have a vow of obedience, so that’s added to loving God first and your neighbor and the commitment we make to be the best servant we could be,” Father McMillan said.

Looking at his life, you’d think he’s done it all but his only regret, he says, is that he didn’t do more.

By Katie Vasquez

These posters line nearly every corner of New York City. 

The faces of hundreds of Israelis kidnapped by Hamas, some as young as 9 months old. 

Israeli citizens Nitzan Mintz and Dede Bandaid arrived in New York for a three-month artist residency in September.

“We know some of the people’s families, I love them actually,” Mintz said. “There is no one Israeli that doesn’t know someone today. The entire Jewish community got hit traumatically.”

About halfway through their stay, they heard troubling news from home.

“My parents [are] saying that the entire country is, like, full with rockets all over the place, like falling from the sky,” Mintz said.

The pair felt helpless being hundreds of miles away.

So they decided to use their talents to put a face to the hundreds affected by the conflict. 

“They have to see their eyes to understand it’s real persons” Bandaid said.

On the first day of the project, they printed 2,000 missing person posters and found many people hesitant to interact with the art. 

“People were very suspicious, they didn’t even want to come close and read it,” Bandaid said. “They didn’t want anything to do with us.”

Disappointed but determined, they uploaded the posters to a website, kidnappedfromisrael.com and immediately noticed a shift. 

“The next day was completely different, when we woke up, the streets of Manhattan were filled with posters,” Bandaid said.

Soon they noticed it wasn’t just New York taking part.

“it has spread not just to other cities in the U.S. but worldwide,” said Bandaid. “It got to Europe, the far East, [and] to South America.”

The pair estimate some 45,000 posters are downloaded a day. 

It’s their hope that with the world’s help these missing Israelis may be able to come home safe and sound.

By Jessica Easthope

The moment a baby is born, everyone in the room waits for a sound, a cry that lets them know the baby is breathing.

Crystal Rivera-Velez and Cristian Ortiz are still waiting. 

“There was a lot of hoping that I would give birth, and the machines were wrong, and the doctors were wrong,” Rivera-Velez said. “But then giving birth, and not hearing her, I think that hurt just as much as when the doctor told me, there was no heartbeat.”

Crystal gave birth to their daughter Valentina on Dec. 8, 2021. The only cries she heard were her own. Valentina was dead.

“I thought I was going home with my baby and that is not happening now,” Rivera-Velez said. “It was pretty much the worst moment of my life.”

For nine months Rivera-Velez and Ortiz had been loud and proud expecting parents, telling their family and friends the best was yet to come. 

“They always told me that I was good, and that the baby was good and that I was like a textbook perfect pregnancy that’s what they were telling me,” Rivera-Velez said.

The cause of death was officially listed as cord compression, but Valentina, who was born full term, was just 3 pounds and 7 ounces. An autopsy showed Valentina’s growth was restricted and her death was preventable.

“That’s when we started the advocacy and started asking questions about how she really died,” Ortiz said. “It wasn’t from cord compression, she was too little. They never caught it.”

The couple planned to bring their baby girl back to a happy loving home. Instead, they brought the quiet from that hospital room back with them. 

“I took the car seat out of the car because I didn’t have the heart for her to get into the car with the car seat in there,” Ortiz said. “I cleaned up the baby’s room, threw everything in a closet. It’s too difficult to look at.”

After months of grieving, Rivera-Velez and Ortiz decided to speak up. They created the nonprofit Valentina’s Voice, helping parents pay for neonatal autopsies and collect data to hopefully prevent another loss.

“It is not fair for a researcher to go grab research from this hospital to try and fix stillbirths, and they have unclean data,” Ortiz said. “So part of Valentina’s Voice is data hygiene.”

The couple never got to hear Valentina’s voice.

“This is all I have left of being a parent so I have to do this,” Ortiz said. “I have to as her father I have to and it’s keeping me alive. It keeps me alive.”

But somehow they’re using it to amplify their own.

If you want to show your support just visit valentinasvoice.org.

There you can donate to help pay for perinatal autopsies with the hope of lowering preventable stillbirths.