It was a disappointment, but not a surprise, that no one would hire Pat Fitzgerald.
He graduated from virtual charter school in 2018 and loved to bake, so he enrolled in a community college food service certificate program and aced it. He was a great cook and a great worker — a real go-getter.
Yet he was rejected by employer after employer. They cited numerous reasons, but the real one was Pat has autism, or autism spectrum disorder. It’s a range of conditions presenting challenges with speech and nonverbal communication and other social skills that many people, and many employers, don’t understand. Many are afraid to take a chance on people with autism or others with intellectual and developmental disabilities, or IDD, despite the fact that they also can have great abilities.
Pat’s parents, Mike and Terri Fitzgerald, learned firsthand that the majority of young adults with IDD don’t have jobs. The only ones offered to Pat were menial away from the public eye, which was not what their outgoing son wanted or needed.
Mr. Fitzgerald, who runs his own human resources software company, mulled starting a business in his Hampton home, where Pat and his mom could make and sell cookies. In the meantime, to have something to do, those two started volunteering to prepare lunches for the homeless at the “Red Door” program at Downtown’s St. Mary of Mercy Catholic Church. People there loved Pat’s sweet personality as much as his cookies and he loved volunteering there. So did his Mom, who was surprised at how nice many of the homeless people were to her son. “There are just some real beautiful people in this world that nobody thinks about or knows about.”
Mr. Fitzgerald’s idea grew into a plan for a bigger, not-at-home business, and he wanted to talk about it with the Rev. Chris Donley, the pastor at Divine Mercy Parish, who he knew was the driving force behind all sorts of good causes including the Move a Mountain Missions that helped Jamaican children with disabilities.
When he finally made a moment to meet with Mr. Fitzgerald, the pastor planned to kindly let him down. But over coffee, they discovered they had something in common: Pat.
Father Donley loved Pat, his enthusiasm for noon Mass and his cookies. He also liked Mr. Fitzgerald’s plan — so much so that he agreed to work with him via Move a Mountain at his landmark Church of the Epiphany, on the Hill District edge of Downtown.
And that’s where, on Oct. 2, Brother Andre’s Cafe, a coffee shop in the red church’s chicly renovated basement, finally opens to the public seven days a week. It will be staffed by Pat and other friends with disabilities and abilities.
There’s Pat’s cousin, Peters’ Michael Oberschelp, who’s a real ham as he and his aide put Brother Andre’s T-shirts into plastic bags to get ready for the grand opening, which was delayed from spring 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. So the business started as an online one, selling cookies and coffee and merchandise, including items made by hand by the children in Jamaica.
On a recent Wednesday, Richland’s Kevin Loiselle was placing labels and stamps on postcards announcing the cafe’s grand opening, about which Pine’s Julia Fieldhammer was writing a piece for the cafe’s website, while Morgan Galuska, also of Pine, and her job coach bagged coffee. Morgan’s gift is for flower arranging, so she’ll also be doing the vases on the tables. Rounding out this cast of characters — they present a weekly Wednesday chaplet on the cafe’s Facebook and Instagram pages — is Danny Shipe of Ross.
Pat, before leading that prayer service, was in the kitchen with his Mom, cranking out more cookies, including his signature snickerdoodles.
He can tell you the ingredients, and that he bakes them and cools them before boxing them up for one of his “nice” new friends, Josh, the United Parcel Service guy. Pat even can help keep track of orders on the computer. He clearly loves his co-workers and his job and the fact that he gets paid real money for doing it.
“He jumps out of bed in the morning,” says his mom, who notes in an aside that he loves eating his own cookies, too.
“It’s a sense of purpose,” says his dad. “He’s over the moon.”
Pat’s parents, too, are pumped about this project, which they hope to grow not just in this location, but also eventually spread to other church locations — perhaps at first as traveling as pop-ups but also as permanent cafes. Similar concepts exist, but not in a church.
This cafe is named for Canadian Andre Bessette, who was sainted despite being sickly his whole life. That story seemed to fit the promise of people with IDD for Mr. Fitzgerald, who also serves them as a board member for Emmaus Community of Pittsburgh, a nonprofit that provides them housing and other help.
“I literally think I was lead here,” Mr. Fitzgerald related as he told the story of all the people who helped make this cafe possible and “so much fun.” He describes himself as a good Pittsburgh Catholic — one of 12 siblings — but says he usually has a hard time seeing God in the day to day. And many of the family’s days, before Pat was diagnosed and after, were very dark. He definitely sees divine help with this project — and laughs about how he might need some more for it to ever break even.
The board that oversees the cafe hired a director and a manager, who will be assisted by volunteers, but the point is to have the now six adults with disabilities make and serve the drinks and eats so customers interact with and get to know them. “These employees are part of the experience.”
He has seen how beautiful that can be on Sundays this summer when the congregation came downstairs after Mass.
You’re welcome to come experience it, too — share the joy, as they put it — but if you do, maybe don’t just say it’s nice.
“Everyone says it’s nice,” says Mr. Fitzgerald, who doesn’t disagree, but who stresses that for Patrick and his co-workers, “It’s life-changing. [They have] a place to go to work where people are excited to see them!”
Mrs. Fitzgerald says that, for her, this was always about Pat and what happens to him when she and her husband can no longer take care of him. But she’s delighted that the cafe is helping others in a similar situation, as well as sharing “the wonders of them” with the rest of the community, where people’s needs aren’t as different as we may think.
“He’s happy,” she says with a giggle about Pat. “Isn’t that what we all want for our children? To be as happy as they can and be doing good in the world.”
Brother Andre’s Cafe is located at 164 Washington Place. The grand opening is from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 2. Regular hours are 7 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.-noon Saturday (but closed Oct. 9) and 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Sunday. Find the cafe menu, store and more at https://brotherandres.org.
Bob Batz Jr.: bbatz@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1930 and on Twitter @bobbatzjr.
Clarification: Brother Andre’s Cafe will open Saturday, Oct. 2. A previous version of this story’s headline incorrectly indicated which Saturday the cafe will open.
First Published: September 23, 2021, 10:00 a.m.
Updated: September 23, 2021, 12:21 p.m.
