Nelon obituaries/memorials, Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ************************************************ Name, date of obit, date submitted, submitted for the USGenWeb Archives by: Nelon, Helen (Sister Mary Helen) d. 6 Feb 1994 Mar, 2001 Don Johnson *************************************************************************** Memorial, Helen Nelon (Sister Mary Helen), Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana Submitted with permission of Dorothy Dawes, O.P. -- dmdawes@accesscom.net 580 Broadway, New Orleans, LA 70118, 504-861-8155, FAX 504-861-8718 or 865-8079 photos at http://www.dominican-sisters.net/stmarys/memoria/nelon.htm In Memory of [Sr. M. Helen Nelon] Dominican Sisters Congregation of St. Mary New Orleans Helen Nelon June 12, 1908 - February 6, 1994 "I have found him whom my heart loves and I will not let Him go." --Sr. M. Helen, quoting the Song of Songs 3:4 in 1950 Her roots were North Carolina Baptist; she taught Sunday school as her mother had before her. Her great-great grandfather was founding pastor of the First Baptist Church of Asheville. Helen was the first of eleven children, devoted to her father, a carpenter; he in turn was devoted to her mother. She attended junior college and normal school, taught, and in the Great Depression years worked in a factory, helping to educate her younger brothers and sisters. She wrote her story for the North Carolina Catholic (March 10, 1950). In October, 1938, age thirty, she began listening to the Catholic Hour on the radio. One day she wrote for information "merely through curiosity." Four months later she met with a priest who "won my whole confidence... I told him at once I did not want to become a Catholic; I just wanted to know something of Catholic Beliefs. He told me that the nuns instructed the women... I did not want anything to do with nuns... I had seen them on the street wearing outlandish long black dresses and veils. I had no desire to make further acquaintance." The priest agreed to instruct her, and in March, 1939 she became Catholic. "I had no other choice," she wrote. Fearful of how her family would react, she noted "everyone accepted my conversion..." "Some have asked why I left my beloved mountains to come to the deep South, and why I became a Dominican... Attracted by the Catholic atmosphere of New Orleans, I spent a vacation here. I visited St. Mary's Dominican Convent as well as many other Catholic [places]. I became interested in another religious order. To choose... was not easy. This is the simple way in which the matter was settled. To me it seemed that the other Order was cake, the Dominican Order bread-- and I needed bread." When her father died at age sixty-four, Sister Mary Helen was a novice and couldn't go home. Yet she wrote seven years later "With conversion comes a joy and peace that the world cannot understand. With the zeal of the convert, with the wondrous joy of one who has digged in a field and found the pearl of great price, I would go up and down the... land proclaiming, 'I have found Him whom my heart loves and I will not let Him go.'" Helen fit right in with the "Unity in Diversity" which characterizes the Congregation she made her own. Some of us learned that her nieces and nephews called her "Aint Hellie," and it caught on. She would smile in her reserved way, with the twinkle that let us know she enjoyed it. She was devoted to her family, and they to her. She loved teaching. Her students, whether in her third grade class, in college as student teachers or in Children's Literature will not forget her. Her archives and history of St. Mary's will long be a monument to her, a tribute to her love of story. She was an artist and a poet, a secret she disclosed only to family and close friends. (She had many!) She was original, and retained the mark of her mountain culture. Ever her own person, she cared deeply for others, showering affection on those who needed it most. In July, 1998, a woman wrote from Texas that she was in an ethics class assigned to find the person who had helped them most, and thank them. After six months on the pastor's desk the letter found its way to St.Mary's, and to the archives. Her third grade teacher at St. Matthias had taken a child who was a Cuban refugee in 1963, and given her special classes after school every day until she learned English as a second language. The woman acknowledged that she was then able to help the other members of her family to learn English, an invaluable asset to the family. The third grade teacher was Sister Mary Helen. We recall the words of Daniel, praising teachers: "They who instruct others in uprightness shall shine as stars for all eternity." Daniel 12:3. Last update March 16, 2001 ***************************************************************************