Brother Conway’s Biography
Bro. Maurice Anselm Conway in the Christian Brothers secondary school in Ballinrobe in the late 1970s an elderly, retired religious brother could be seen after school each day, walking along carrying a bucket and mop. It was Bro. Anselm Conway (right), and he was heading off to wash the toilets, because he thought this was "not a nice job” for the women who cleaned the school.
Maurice Conway was born 27 March 1901 and grew up, the eldest of three children, on a small farm near the village of Grange in west Co. Waterford. Irish was the language spoken in his home. On 9 September 1916, when he was 15, the boy joined the Christian Brothers, and was given the name Anselm. On Christmas Day 1926 he made his definitive commitment to God as a religious brother.
During his early years in religious life Bro. Conway taught in Dingle, Synge St, Dublin, Cork, Monasterevin, Cahirciveen and, from 1932, in Tralee. About 5' 8" in height and weighing 8.5 stone, he was a gentle, simple, quaint character, with a roguish sense of humour. He had a gift for understanding and relating with children, and could usually find a few sweets in his pocket when he met them on his walks about town.
“It was not an uncommon sight to see him walking the streets of Tralee with a flock of children accompanying him,” said a friend.
He was particularly sensitive to children in hospital. A natural story-teller, he enjoyed entertaining them with his own stories (see Kathleen's letters). Often it was not just the children, but their parents as well who enjoyed being with him. Throughout his life he had an extraordinary capacity for making and keeping friends.
When the child film-star Shirley Temple became famous he wrote to her, and kept up a correspondence with her for years. When she married she sent him a photo of herself taken on her wedding day.
In August 1943 he was sent to Ballinrobe as religious superior. His very presence introduced a happy, homely atmosphere to the monastery, and on Friday night his "l think we'll have a drink" was particularly welcome. He himself liked to sit at the fire, smoking his pipe and having "a dropeen of whiskey". He was to spend the next thirty-nine years in Ballinrobe, a legend in his own lifetime. Welcoming a new superior on one occasion he remarked, "Here in the west we move at a leisurely pace, but you will get used to us.” Known to generations of pupils as ‘Gosh’, from his habit of using that exclamation, he was considered a marvellous science, maths and religion teacher, and could keep discipline in class without even raising his voice.
While one of his hobbies was writing stories for children, he was also fascinated by the latest developments in science, and shortly after the bombing of Hiroshima was explaining the workings of the atomic bomb to his pupils. At the same time, he followed developments in the pop music world, and loved to visit Dublin just to listen to the noise of the traffic, pneumatic drills, etc. On one of these trips, he was taking home a budgie for the cook. He opened the box to show the bird to some children on the train, and it escaped. There was happy pandemonium up and down the carriage as all joined in the attempt to recapture the bird, which eventually arrived in Ballinrobe minus its tail.
Bro. Conway’s gentle humour carried him through many an awkward situation. On one occasion a superior remarked on the colour of his teeth, an indirect but disapproving reference to his pipe-smoking. He replied with a smile, “Oh, that's a birthmark”.
He could not do enough for the town's children and young people, organising classes in Irish dancing, setting up a projector to show them a film each week, and playing a key role in re-starting the town's brass and reed band.
It was a major occasion for him when Princess Grace of Monaco visited the town and the band led the parade. He himself, in his own Chaplinesque way, sauntered along beside the car, peering inside and smiling at the princess.
Soon after he arrived in Ballinrobe he began walking the two and a quarter miles from his monastery out to Creagh sanatorium each Saturday, and sometimes more frequently, to visit the patients. There he met George Devery, a 16-year-old orphan from a traveller background, and took a special interest in the teenager. When George died on 27 March 1944 Bro. Conway ensured he was not given a pauper’s funeral but had his own grave with a headstone, and that his grave was always properly cared for.
But it was the tragic life of Kathleen Kilbane which moved him most deeply. His tender gentleness and love became the great source of Kathleen's happiness during her last year of life. The good brother also gently inspired the boys he was teaching to share in his tenderness for the dying child, and to learn from her holiness.
Bro. Conway was described by someone who knew him well as “one of nature's gentlemen". He was, however, much more. He rejoiced in his calling as a religious brother, had a deep love for daily Mass and for Our Lady, and loved to pray the rosary. Innocent but immensely wise, delighting in the simplicity of children and in the complexity of modern science, deeply sensitive to human suffering but with a ready sense of humour, refusing to be hurried, yet always up to date, he was, above all, a man of unshakeable faith. So many of those who knew him felt it was a privilege to have lived with him or to have been taught by him.
His death was unexpected when it came. On the evening of 11 November 1982 the housekeeper noticed he was not in his usual good form. He promised he would attend the doctor the following day. But that night he passed away in his sleep. At his own request he was buried in Ballinrobe, in the plot beside George Devery.
His obituary recalled his story about Kathleen Kilbane. It added, “He made several copies in his own copperplate handwriting and gave them to his close friends. Perhaps one day it may be published.”
