GREENFIELD — If the family dog followed the Tosick children to school, their principal knew who to call.
People who remember the years Sister Helen Therese Conway spent in Greenfield, as a teacher and principal at St. Michael Catholic School, tell of a nun with warmth and humor who took the time to really get to know people.
“She knew each child, and she’d try to find out as much as she could about them,” said Jody Smith, whose children attended the school during Conway’s tenure. “They respected her, but yet she knew each one. She could go up and talk to them and see how they were. … She was just so good at looking out for each one.”
Conway grew up in Chicago, one of nine children. She was 22, and still known as Eileen, when she left Chicago in 1948. She was bound for Terre Haute and a new life as a Sister of Providence.
“She took a train from Chicago with another young woman,” said friend Janet Tosick, a former longtime Greenfield resident. “They took a train to St. Mary’s, and that was it.”
After 72 years of ministry, Conway died April 16. Her 37-year education career included 18 spent in Greenfield.
Tosick remembers an early letter Conway sent home to parents, encouraging them to check teachers on their children’s stories. She also urged parents to be patient with her, that God wasn’t finished with her yet.
That impressed Tosick. “I thought that was so humble,” she said.
Sometimes the Tosicks’ golden retriever, Judge, followed the children to school.
“Sister Helen would call me, ‘Honey, Judge is at school,’” Tosick said.
Conway is one of several former St. Michael teachers and/or principals who are Sisters of Providence. Years ago, Smith said, nuns would teach at St. Michael and live in a house across the street. Smith’s family lived nearby and grew close to the nuns, helping out if something needed fixed around the house.
The nuns would return to Terre Haute in the summers. Eventually Conway was the only one living in the house.
When she started there in 1969, the school was smaller, and a nun might teach multiple grade levels in the same room.
Over the years, the school expanded. When a parish life center opened at St. Michael in November 1978, physical education classes began to meet in the center’s gym. In 1980, the school welcomed Indianapolis Archbishop Edward T. O’Meara for a visit; 220 students were there to greet him.
During the 1980s, the school for several years had a “Christmas Around the World” theme day, in which different grade levels assumed the dress of a particular country and visited each other’s classrooms to learn about various nations’ customs.
In a column for the March 5, 1984, Daily Reporter, she wrote that the school sought to “recognize where each student stands spiritually, personally and intellectually, to strive for the integration of these three areas and to advance the student as far as he is capable of progressing.”
In 1987 Conway, then 62, retired from education and moved to Terre Haute. She then worked for 30 years in various departments at Saint Mary-of-the Woods. In 2017, “she truly retired and devoted more time to a ministry of prayer,” Sister Ann Casper said in remarks at Conway’s funeral. The funeral was attended by a few sisters spaced in various pews, amid COVID-19 restrictions, but the hour-long service was streamed to share with Conway’s family and friends and the rest of the sisters.
Casper said on morning walks, she would see Conway visiting the church to pray. Even in the last year or so, she said, Conway was a regular at daily Mass, making her way to her usual back pew with the aid of a walker.
“I was always impressed by her devotion and prayer,” Casper said.
Tosick would occasionally make the drive to Terre Haute to visit Conway, attending Mass together and then staying for lunch with her.
About three years ago, Tosick organized a group from Greenfield to visit the Shrine of Saint Mother Theodore Guerin, who founded the Sisters of Providence. The sisters set aside a room for the group to visit and served lunch. Near the end, Tosick said, Conway hugged her and said how good it was to see all her old friends from Greenfield.
“She was kind of like either an older sister or a mom for me,” Tosick said. “I just feel blessed that I knew her.”
