Helene Churchill’s dedication to St. Francis de Sales parish is a family legacy. Her great grandfather, James S. Curran, was an early settler and farmer in Lyons township. He was one of the original St. Francis de Sales Church parishioners and helped to build the FIRST church building around 1852. It was a frame structure on the southeast corner of the present property that was eventually replaced by our current church building in 1889. From “History of Walworth County” regarding the Curran family and James (and Helene’s Great Uncle Henry): “They were faithful members of the Catholic church and in the early days the vicar-general of the Milwaukee diocese occasionally came to the locality in which the Currans resided, celebrating mass at the cabin of the subject’s parents in the early days. When the first Catholic church was built upon Catholic Hill in the east edge of Lake Geneva, Henry and James Curran carried timbers on their backs nearly a mile and up the long hill to where the church was built.”
As a child, Helene remembers coming to church with her mother and her twin sister Kathleen to pick up the votive candle holders. They would take them home to clean them by boiling them and scraping off the wax. Helene sang in the church choir for years and can still picture the pipe organ and making her way around the pipes in the choir loft. She and her husband, John, were married at our parish in 1952. Over the years, Helene has donated her time
and talent by serving on the cemetery committee, cleaning the church, serving at funeral luncheons, and working at many festivals and dinners. Currently, you often see her friendly face as a greeter at Saturday’s 5:15 p.m. Mass, and as a faithful Monday morning money counter, which she has been doing “as long as anyone can remember.” She also is an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion and brings communion to the homebound. Pictured here is the beautiful stained glass window of Mary holding the Child Jesus donated by Mr. and Mrs. Henry Curran, Helene’s grandparents. It is the window in our church on the east side, closest to the altar. Thank you, Helene, for upholding your family’s longstanding tradition of love and support for St. Francis de Sales parish!