Father Bussen to speak at the Park City Museum

When Father Bob Bussen first arrived at his post at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Park City in 1994, a growth in the immigrant community was already occurring at a steady clip.

Since he spoke English and Spanish, and almost all the newcomers were from Mexico, he already had a level of trust with them.

“I had a natural inroad and access to them and the Catholic Church became the safe place where we could deal with issues, and that’s why people looked to me as one of the leaders in the community,” Bussen said during a phone call from his new post in Cedar City. “Still, there were others that built bridges so we could help the immigrants settle in the community.”

Bussen will speak about the immigration issues of the 1990s during a session at the Park City Museum, 528 Main St., on Thursday, Oct. 6, at 6 p.m. The free discussion is presented in conjunction with the museum’s current exhibit, “Bittersweet Harvest: The Bracero Program,” which studies the documented Mexican laborers who worked in the United States from 1942 until 1964.

“The talk I give will be a tale of two cities,” Bussen said. “I’ll talk about the reality of the immigrant population of Park City and Heber City, which are two very different stories. I’ll speak about how Park City responded and how Heber City responded.”

Park City’s response was very positive, thanks to “some giants who had a lot of foresight,” Bussen said.

“One of the most important people of all, to me, was Linda Singer, then principal of Treasure Mountain Middle School,” he said. “She insisted all of her teachers be trained and ready for the immigrants. When the children came in, the teachers had a plan and were ready to deal with the parents who didn’t speak English and the children who were learning how to speak English.”

Early on there were bridges built by people who were doing something proactive, he said.

“I had my place to play, but it was only one of a much larger and better thing, and that’s important to understand,” Bussen said. “With that regard, I worked with the City Council and the police and the state Supreme Courts. The courts were concerned about legal abuses going on in the state. So they were having hearings and we had one at Park City in St. Mary’s and we really made a difference.”

In addition to setting up an English as a Second Language (ESL) program and a food bank, Bussen and the others collaborated with the Park City Police Department and the mayor’s office.

“I also worked with doctors, because the doctor in Coalville asked why he was taking care of all the Park City patients and challenged me to do something about it, so we began what is now known as the People’s Health Clinic,” Bussen remembered. “All of those pieces contributed to building the healthy environment in Park City.”

Bussen, who recently returned from a sabbatical that took him on a pilgrimage of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela trail in Spain, said there were some bumps and bruises during the process. Park City, though, understood the importance of the immigrant community and the difficulties of bringing different languages and cultures together and faced it head on.

Heber City had the opposite experience.

“I was in the middle of that one because I was the only one over there that tried to do something,” he said. “There were no allies. The people who I needed to talk with the mayor and the sheriff met me on opposite ends of the spectrum, so I was the lightning rod for it.”

At that time, Heber, Bussen said, was a very Anglo, English-speaking and insular city, into which the immigrant community was inserted.

“There was no dynamic or interaction between the cultures, so when things blew up, there was no way to address them,” he said. “They had no bridges in communication. It was a very sad story but has mercifully gotten better. They have tried really hard to fix things.

“My talk at the museum will be about the immigration issue, but it will also be about building bridges,” he said.

Father Bob Bussen will present a discussion at the Park City Museum, 528 Main St., on Thursday, Oct. 6, at 6 p.m. Admission is free. For more information, visit www.parkcityhistory.org.