Two Hearts One Fire: A Glimpse Behind the Mask of Leprosy

“Two Hearts, One Fire” is an eminently readable collection of human interest accounts, often amusing, and sometimes poignant, of life in Jamaica, British West Indies, from the hitherto unpublished collections of an Army Medic, and the heart-to-heart experiences of a missionary Sister with her leprosy patients, as gleaned from the letters of the Nun to her community back home in the United States. Neither the Sergeant nor the Nun had any idea that their brief encounters at the old Leper’s Home had any particular significance for the future, or even that their paths would cross again. The war over, the Sergeant, looking for help in the fulfillment of a promise he had made to himself to provide personally-inscribed gifts at Christmas for the leprosy patients he could not forget, rallied his family and friends to the cause.

Seeking advice, he decided to visit the Massachusetts headquarters of the Marist Missionary Sisters who staffed the leprosarium in Jamaica. There he again encountered the Nun who was back home for medical attention. She was allowed to help him in his project -- a joining of efforts which today flourishes as the Damien-Dutton Society for Leprosy Aid.

As the Society’s horizons expanded, so did its membership and its world recognition. Five decades later it was not only “two hearts, one fire” but thousands upon thousands of generous hearts afire with the need to alert the public to the unique problem of a much maligned, much misunderstood leprosy affliction, known today as Hansen’s Disease.

THE SERGEANT, Howard E. Crouch, born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, but so long removed as to be regarded a native to Long Island where he has his home. He served in the United States Medical Corps during World War II, three of those years in Jamaica, West Indies, where he became interested in the plight of the victims of leprosy in the old Leper’s Home on the outskirts of Spanish Town. Among the staff of ten Marist Missionary Sisters he met there, caring for some 200 leprosy patients, men, women and children of varying races and creeds was Sister Mary Augustine, s.m.s.m. The war years over, he founded the Damien-Dutton Society for Leprosy Aid, Inc. to promote and develop the work for leprosy victims, aiding not just patients, but research, rehabilitation, educational and direct subsidy of leprosy projects around the world. THE NUN: Sister Mary Augustine, s.m.s.m., a former Washingtonian, had relinquished a government supervisory post to enter with the Marists in the Boston area where she pronounced her vows in 1939 in preparation for the missions of the South Pacific. The attack on Pearl Harbor cut off all contact with that area and she was posted to the Caribbean for the duration. When she returned to the United States she was assigned promotional work for her community. She edited and published, designed exhibits, met speaking engagements and took courses at Marquette University. She served on committees and governing boards of national organizations such as the Catholic Press, the Catholic Hospital Association, the President’s Committee for the Physically Handicapped, and the Mission Secretariat. After retiring from her fund raising efforts she was allowed to devote as much time as needed to the leprosy apostolate and served as editor of educational literature and director of the people-to-pe! ople correspondence program of the Damien Dutton Society.