Seventy years ago today, my parents were married at Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church in Cleveland, Ohio. Fifty years later, five months before my mother passed away, they celebrated their golden anniversary at St. Ann’s Catholic Church in Naples, Florida. 

From A Man of Few Words: Remembering Jack Conway by Daniel Conway

When Jack Conway first met Helen Bernet Callaghan in the late 1940s, she was vibrant, athletic, intelligent and very attractive. My mother used to say, “I dated a lot of bums, but I married Jack Conway.” It was an exaggeration, of course. Many of the men she dated and their eventual wives remained my parents’ good friends throughout the years. Still, there was something about Jack Conway that attracted her to him over and above his good looks and winning personality. He certainly was no bum. There was something good and solid in him that she recognized as being special.

They were a great match. She shared his love for sports and politics and could more than hold up her end of the conversation on any subject. (Although she had close friendships with women all her life, my mother used to say that at parties she preferred being in the kitchen with the men discussing politics and sports to “girl talk” in the parlor with the women.) Mom had a lifelong love of literature, especially poetry, and classical music that my dad didn’t share, but the things they had in common—including their deep devotion to their Catholic faith—far outweighed their differences.  

Their wedding photos show a couple who were definitely drawn to one another. My father’s smile, which was always radiant, seemed to increase in intensity when he and my mother were together. That intensity, and the fact that he was deeply in love with her, never changed. Nearly 70 years later, Jack Conway was still madly in love with Helen Callaghan.