Larry Nelson hit the trumpet fanfare sound-effect that morning before lifting his voice heavenward (and radioward) with a litany of puns about faith and furniture.
“Ladies and gentleman,” the radio host intoned, “I present to you, a nun who stands tall. A nun with her feet firmly planted in service …”
“Well, as you know, Larry,” Sister Mary Brendan Conlon said, playing along, “I don’t take things sitting down.”
“And it’s a good thing you don’t, Sister,” he said, bouncing it back.
“Because, uh, at present, we don’t have any chairs. I mean, we’d like to have you pull one up for a nice chat, but, you know.”
Nelson, the on-air entertainer who was a staple of Morgantown’s airwaves for decades, was recalling the morning when Sister Brendan, the Ursaline nun who was then the executive director of Christian Help, dropped in to talk about her organization’s annual coat drive for youngsters from needy families.
The ecumenical organization on Walnut Street did, and still does, serious outreach for the community.
Sister Brendan died last month at the Mother House of her order in Kentucky.
She was 93 years old, and was teaching, writing, volunteering, and doing all the things she always did, right up until her passing.
Meanwhile, it was a serious interview that morning, Nelson said, even with their trademark banter attached.
Nelson, who is Catholic, was friends with Conlon outside of radio.
At the time of that interview, he was working for a now-defunct station (not associated with the West Virginia Radio Corp.) which really didn’t have any chairs on that particular morning.
They were all broken —not intentionally — and the station was on a tight budget.
Paychecks, first. Replacement furniture, later.
Some things have to wait.
A busted chair in a radio studio, you laugh about. But other balancing acts are nothing to smile over.
The electric bill, or groceries?
Your prescription — or the poster board and other materials for your kid’s Science Fair project?
“Sister Brendan had a great sense of humor about herself,” Nelson said, “but you don’t laugh when you’re running Christian Help. People are in serious need.”
‘Here we go’
She was born in Cumberland, Md., a working-class town in the foothills of the Allegheny and Appalachian mountain ranges, where she learned about service and outreach before she could even walk.
Her father was mayor of the town, which, like most in the region, was looking in the rearview mirror at its best economic days. Her brother was also elected to that office.
You helped your neighbors and co-workers in Cumberland, because, well, that’s what you did.
She entered the convent in 1946 and taught high school English at parochial schools in Maryland and Nebraska before an opening at the former St. Francis High brought her to Morgantown.
Morgantown was where she met Sister Thecla Shiel, also of the Ursaline order.
Sister Thecla, who was principal of the St. Francis elementary school, knew all about poverty. She grew up at Scotts Run.
Morgantown and Monongalia County weren’t as prosperous as they appeared to be, Sister Thecla said, even with WVU, Mylan Pharmaceuticals and other bustling ventures.
Coal miners tuning in to the “Miner’s Bulletin Board” on radio would oftentimes hear their shifts weren’t working that day, or that week.
In 1975, Sister Thecla and the Rev. John DiBacco, who recently retired as parish priest of St. Mary in Star City, had an idea. They would form a homegrown outreach agency to help people in the Christian spirit of help and service.
That would be the name of the enterprise, in fact: Christian Help.
“Sister Thecla had long been teaching about social justice,” Sister Brendan recalled in 2016 for a feature in The Dominion Post about the history of the organization.
Being a school administrator and the administrator of a human services agency — at the same time — was getting to be too much, though, and that nasty spill sealed it.
Sister Thecla was walking to her office one morning when she caught her feet — and fell.
She wasn’t seriously injured in the tumble, but still, it was serious enough. Could Sister Brendan fill in at Christian Help?
“Of course, I wasn’t going to say no,” Sister Brendan remembered.
That first day at her friend’s desk was unforgettable.
Sister Thecla left a lot of grit, spirit and determination in place, Sister Brendan said. She just wasn’t the most organized Ursaline on the planet, her friend recalled, with a warm chuckle.
“It was, ‘OK, God. Here we go.’”
A worker from Catholic Charities of West Virginia spent an afternoon helping her reign it in. Sister Brendan’s temporary posting lasted 12 years.
Writing in the margins
“She was ahead of Pope Francis,” DiBacco said.
“The pope calls on us to ‘accept the marginalized,’ no matter what their circumstances. Sister Brendan always did that. She was truly dedicated.”
Under Sister Brendan’s stewardship, DiBacco said, Christian Help became “a real resource” for the area.
It’s not just about its food pantry, said Colleen Lankford, its current executive director. It’s about empowerment.
There’s the Jobs for Life program, for one, which provides spiritual direction and in-the-trenches instruction for people needing to enter the workforce.
And there are the other sessions on nutrition and personal finances.
On an afternoon last week at its Walnut Street headquarters, there weren’t a lot of people browsing the clothing racks — but it was still busy.
She doesn’t know what the Delta variant may bring, but in many ways right now, Lankford said, it’s like the place is coming up for air after COVID.
Volunteers were sorting through boxes of shirts and pants in preparation for the annual Back to School Clothing Giveaway Aug. 16. Call 304-296-0221 or visit www.motownchristianhelp.com for more information.
“We never stopped working during the pandemic,” Lankford said.
“We just had to adjust to our circumstances day-to-day,” she said. “That’s something we learned from Sister Brendan. I’m grateful for her influence.”
And, the good nun’s spirit of resourcefulness, Lankford said with a little laugh, after a visitor pointed out the book “Grant Writing for Dummies” on a shelf.
“Oh, you saw that? Hey, whatever works.”
Journeys (and what happened after the interview)
Catholic saints have multiple divine duties in their job descriptions.
Brendan, the patron saint a young Ursaline novice took as her name in 1946, also watches over elderly travelers.
In 1994, at the age of 66, she became one — when she left Morgantown and lit out for the southern coalfields of Mingo County to found a Christian Help branch there.
Before that, in the 1980s, she was jailed more than once, having been arrested in peaceful protests over President Reagan’s policies in Nicaragua.
For her, she said, it all came down to the people caught in the middle of presidential politics or cycles of generational poverty or anything else beyond their control.
For her, awareness begets understanding, which begets empathy.
Oh — and that interview with Nelson?
About 30 minutes later, a pickup truck carrying a specific cargo was idling in the station parking lot.
“Hey,” its driver said. “Sister Brendan said you guys needed some chairs.”
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