“Sister Francesca (Hazel) taught me to play every Monday night,” Sister Elaine said. “She was very understanding.”
(These days, Sister Elaine stops by the music room in Saint Ursula Hall a few times a week to play some of the early songs she learned on the piano, usually the “Black Hawk Waltz,” “The Bells of Saint Mary,” and “Chopsticks.”)
After five years in Nebraska, she went home to Louisville to become principal and teacher at St. Paul School. She taught fifth through eighth grade as well as being the organist for the church. She was also the local superior in her house of sisters, handling the administrative responsibilities and staying in contact with the pastor. She did all these things at age 26.
Sister Elaine shows how she and Jean Allen, staff administrator, can cut a rug during the 2009 Sock Hop in the Villa.
The school closed in 1964, and at the end of that school year, her father died, so she was glad she was in Louisville to be close to her family. That fall she went to Fredericktown, Ky., to be principal and teacher at Holy Trinity School, where she taught the seventh and eighth grades.
After four years there, she came back to be supervisor of religious education for the Diocese of Owensboro. During her tenure with the diocese, she took a semester in 1971 to work on her master’s degree in religious education at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., which she completed during the summers.
“I went to 56 parishes to teach lay people how to teach religious education,” she said. “I didn’t even have a car, I went by bus. I’d be carrying a film projector and a tape recorder, and still wearing a habit.”
In 1973, she went to St. Stephen Parish in Owensboro as director of religious education, and also taught religion to seventh and eighth graders at the school. “I loved working with the kids,” she said.
In 1975, after seven years out of the classroom, Sister Elaine became principal and teacher at Immaculate Conception School in Hawesville, Ky., and director of religious education at the parish.
“I taught math to the upper grades,” she said. “It was fun getting to play games at recess again. I had taken a cruise to the Caribbean, so I taught them some dances I learned. They liked the cha-cha.”
She taught herself to play the guitar, and began the guitar Mass at Immaculate Conception. “I’ve always found time to play something,” she said.
In 1980, she went to Flaherty, Ky., as director of religious education and religion teacher at St. Martin of Tours, a public school where all the students were Catholic. The students had to leave the building and come to a separate building for religion class, she said.
The Land of Enchantment
In 1983, she experienced what she calls “the love of her life,” her first of eight years in New Mexico. “There’s no experience to equal it. I still hear from people there,” she said. “I just got an invitation to a wedding of a boy who I taught to play the piano when he was 6. I came to his home to teach him, then I’d play ping pong with his dad.”
Sister Elaine helps to seat some children during a RiverPark Center performance Feb. 25. She is consistently among the top 10 volunteers in hours served at the performing arts center.
The receptivity and affection of the New Mexico people is unparalleled, she said. “They make sure all your needs are met. When I arrived they were there to greet me, and had stocked my kitchen for me,” she said. “Eighth grade boys hugged me at graduation. They were just beautiful kids. You were respected and loved from the day you walked in.”
She spent five years as director of religious education and parish minister at St. Mary Parish in Bloomfield. She was asked to come home in 1988 to work at the Mount Saint Joseph Retreat Center, but Sister Elaine was glad when another sister took that position first. She moved to St. Teresa Parish in Grants, N.M., in 1988, where she spent three years as director of religious education, parish minister, and music teacher.