Faith of one woman was calling for many faiths to talk

It must have been before the era of wash-and-wear, because I remember I was ironing our sons' blue uniform shirts in our kitchen the first time Joan Grisell called me. The year was 1963.

I had read in the Daily Herald that Mrs. Grisell was planning an interfaith forum, and I'd sent her a contribution. She was responding. But the phone call was short. When I told her that I was Catholic, she said excitedly that she had to get right off the phone.

"I have to call Tom (her husband) this minute," she said, "and tell him there is a Catholic in town interested in ecumenism." Such was the religious climate in the early 1960s, especially in Arlington Heights where there had been long antipathy between the Lutherans and the Catholics.

Actually, there was a great deal of antipathy nationally between religious groups in 1963. Ecumenism -- the idea that people of different faiths could come to understand and appreciate each other -- was novel, but welcome in some quarters.

Joan Grisell, who died at the beginning of March at 89, was a welcomer. Convinced that people of different faiths needed to exchange views, she organized what I think is the most exciting program I've ever attended in Arlington Heights.

This petite grandmotherly Presbyterian woman, with no contacts, operating out of the strength of her convictions, invited three eminent scholars, much in demand for their views, to talk at Recreation Park field house. Recreation Park? On hard chairs? Who would come?

But the woman who asked Dr. Martin Marty, now the most respected U.S. church historian, to speak (once the local kids got off the basketball court), also managed to provide an audience for Jewish scholar and author, Will Herberg, and Dr. Joseph Sittler, respected Lutheran teacher from the University of Chicago, along with Dr. Marty.

It was an epic evening. Joan Grisell was a prophet, in her way, one of Arlington's finest. Prophets believe that because they hold the truth, all will give way. It was true for Joan. Her vision, while part of an international vision energized by Vatican II, was fruitful because she had faith in it, and worked endlessly to bring people around. First the forum. Then the Arlington Heights Ecumenical Activities and Discussion (AHEAD) committee. An AHEAD week of activities. An inter-faith Thanksgiving service. Individual discussion groups, some of which lasted more than two decades. She was a part of all.

At one of the early inter-faith discussion groups at the Grisell home, a question was asked: "How can you tell if the spirit calls you?"

A Presbyterian said that he experienced the call "interiorly," confident that God spoke to him directly. A Catholic responded: "Usually, it's on the telephone -- in the form of someone asking me to help my neighbor."

All agreed, according to participant Sally Leighton, that if the call came in the form of a phone call, "it's likely that it would be Joan Grisell on the line."