Sister Mary Helen, OSF (1896 - 1987)
Great granddaughter of Franz Xavier Boeding (1796 - 1878)
Anna Mary Boeding was born on a farm near St. Lucas, Fayette County, Iowa on December 3, 1896 and was baptized by her uncle, the Reverend Francis Xavier Boeding, then pastor of St. Luke's Catholic Church. She was the sixth child and second daughter in a family of eleven children born to Edward Otto Boeding, a Westphalian emigrant, and Elizabeth Lohman Boeding, a native of West Point, Iowa.
Every school day, for five years, Anna with her brothers and sisters, trudged the one mile to St. Luke's Catholic School, conducted by the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. When she was eleven the family moved to Seneca, Kansas where she completed the grammar grades at St. Peter and Paul Catholic School, conducted by the Benedictine Sisters. She received her First Holy Communion in June of 1909. After the death of her father in 1910, many household and farm duties were exacted of Anna, especially after her older sister Clara had left home to enter a convent. (pictures of the two sisters together, 1907 -1920 - 1946)
While in her early teens Anna expressed the desire to enter the religious life. However, she abided by her mother's advice to wait until her eighteenth birthday. In the meantime, Anna enrolled in a School for Sewing, and because of her native ability became an expert seamstress - a skill that benefited not only family and friends but also all other persons contacted in her future career.
Anna's long deferred wish to join her sister in the convent was fulfilled when on November 4, 1917, she was accepted as a candidate by the Sisters of St. Francis, Dubuque, Iowa.
Seven months later, on June 13, 1918, she received the Franciscan habit from the Most Reverend James J. Keane, Archbishop of Dubuque, and was given the name Sister Mary Helen. After a two-year novitiate during which she continued religious life education and training for the teaching apostolate, Sister Helen was admitted to vows on June 20, 1920.
Sister Mary Helen holds the enviable record of having taught primary grades for 56 consecutive years. Moreover, in each of these years she prepared the children for first confession and First Holy Communion. Added to this was the twenty or more summer vacation schools, where again, Sister Helen had charge of the First Communion classes.
A success story in which Sister Helen had a leading role is recorded in the community Chronical, 1962, Vol. III, No. 4. During the summer vacation school at St. Mary's Church in Armstrong, Iowa, a girl named Kathleen Schrieber, oldest of seven children came into Sister Helen's classroom for instruction. She was not a Catholic, very shy and fearful. Sister Helen's kindness put the newcomer at ease and gave her courage to continue in the class. Years later, in a letter dated 1961, Kathleen wrote: "I would not have had the courage to become a Catholic, had the Sister not been so kind and understanding. She gave me a rosary. Since that time all my brothers and sisters have been baptized into the Catholic Church by Father Bernard Eischeid.
A list of the parish schools to which Sister Helen was assigned and the years of service in each, is kept in the community archives.
St. Martin's
Odebolt, Iowa 1921 - 1926 St. Joseph's Earlville, Iowa 1926 - 1927 Immaculate Conception Haverhill, Iowa 1927 - 1934 St. Mary's Alton, Iowa 1934 - 1942 St. John's Arcadia, Iowa 1942 - 1944 St. Catherine's Oyens, Iowa 1944 - 1946 St. Benedict's St. Benedict, Iowa 1946 - 1957 St. Mary's Pomeroy, Iowa 1957 - 1964 St. Boniface's Garner, Iowa 1964 - 1965 St. Martin's Odebolt, Iowa 1965 - 1968 Holy Trinity Dubuque, Iowa 1968 - 1971 St. Catherine's St. Catherine, Iowa 1971 - 1977
In several missions, Sister Helen served as local superior: in others as local first assistant and procurator. Sisters who worked with Sister Helen unanimously view her as a model religious, exemplary community member and friend. She retired in 1977, taking up residence at Immaculate Conception Convent. Because of progressive ill health, she was admitted to Holy Family Hall, the community's retirement and nursing facility in 1979.