Many share memories
of a beloved bishop

By Michelle Martin
Staff Writer

In the hours after his death, Bishop Edwin M. Conway was remembered as a real priest, a soldier for Christ, a model, a friend and “the best brother a guy could have.”

Bishop Conway, 70, for the last year the vicar general of the Archdiocese of Chicago, died at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood early Aug. 9. He had suffered from esophageal cancer.

His funeral was planned for Aug. 13 at Holy Name Cathedral, after this edition went to press.

Jerry Conway, the bishop’s older brother, spent most of the final weekend at his side and was with him when he died. Bishop Conway died at peace, he said.

“He was just an outstanding fair but tough guy,” Jerry Conway said. “We were best friends our entire lives.”

To Jerry Conway, the bishop was always “Bud,” a family nickname that was bestowed because his mother would not let her younger son be called “Junior.” He knew from his elementary school days that he wanted to be a priest, his brother said, and the vocation delighted his family. “My mother always thought that if her son was a priest, she’d go straight to heaven,” Jerry Conway said.

Bishop Conway traveled the world on his vacations with his brother and sister-in-law, especially enjoying a cruise through the Great Lakes that the three took about eight years ago. He also liked working on a house that he owned for a time in Fox Lake.

“We refurbished that house inside and out,” Conway said. “With never any conflict. You should have seen him with a saw or hammer in his hand, gritting his teeth. You’d think he was a handyman.”

Josie Guidice, his assistant for 13 years at Catholic Charities, remembers Bishop Conway when he started working at the agency as a vigorous young priest in 1967.

“He was tall and thin, with that dark hair, and he smoked a pipe,” Guidice said. “When he walked down the hall, heads would turn. But if anyone said anything about it, he would get embarrassed.”

But over the years, it was Bishop Conway’s gentleness, and how he connected with everyone, that most impressed her.

“It wasn’t like he was nice to me because I was his secretary and I was important,” she said. “It didn’t matter if you were the guy driving the car or the scavenger. He cared about everybody, more than people do.”

She recalled in the early 1980s bringing her mother to Maryville Academy’s Chuckwagon Day fundraiser. As Guidice and her husband struggled to get her mother out of the car and into a wheelchair, the then-Father Conway strode up. Without making a fuss, he picked up Guidice’s mother and gently placed her in the chair.

“Another person would have said hello and moved on,” Guidice said. “Another person wouldn’t have stopped.”

Father Jeffrey Grob, who celebrated a memorial Mass at the Pastoral Center hours after the bishop’s death, compared his final months to the final weeks of Edith Stein, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, who was put to death Aug. 9, 1942, at Auschwitz.

Like the Carmelite saint, Grob said, knowing of his impending death did not distract the bishop from his mission in living.

“His journey was a little longer,” Grob said in a homily to Pastoral Center staff, It didn’t deter him in any way. The walk got slower, not so much head covering, his body seemed frail. But that didn’t deter his spirit, his presence, his faith, his prayer, his snacking. … It didn’t faze him. He lived maybe more for you and me than for himself.”

Catholic New World staff writer Dolores Madlener spoke with several of Bishop Conway’s classmates (1960).

Father James J. O’Brien, pastor of St. Eugene Parish, went to Our Lady of the Angels School with “Bud” Conway. It was in the seventh or eighth grade, O’Brien recalled, when one of the sisters said, “Edwin, I think you should go to the seminary.” O’Brien said the bishop was a good friend who never said a negative word about anybody.

Father Herbert J. Meyr, pastor at St. James in Maywood, remembers best their work together when Bishop Conway headed Catholic Charities. Meyr said he frequently sent cases to Charities. “He really got involved and was a great support—a very compassionate man.

Father Kilian Knittel, pastor of St. Columba Parish, remembers his classmate as “focused, with an old-fashioned love for the church right from his seminary days.” He said the young Conway even fashioned some small rooms in the basement so seminarians could practice their homilies.

Father Louis Zake, now retired, remembered Bishop Conway as the “people person, who respected everyone and had time and a smile for you, no matter how busy he was.” And in a world rife with the latest gossip, Zake could say about his classmate, “He never said a bad word about anyone.”

For Father John W. Roller, recently retired pastor of St. Thomas Becket Parish, Bishop Conway was “a fun person with a great sense of humor, who enjoyed a good laugh.” He had, said Roller, “an invisible strength that people drew from.”

Another close friend was Father William Welsch, recently retired from St. Lambert Parish in Skokie. He recalled enjoyable lunches, “talking shop.” And when Bishop Conway’s appetite diminished due to his illness, Welsch said, “He still made it up to Skokie for lunch at his favorite sandwich shop” with his old friend.

Father Dan Coughlin, now chaplain to the U.S. House of Representatives, said that a few years ago, when he was about to become the first priest in that post, it meant catching a quick flight to Washington and just having time to call his mother and Cardinal George. Although Coughlin’s arrival back in Chicago was not announced, “Ed Conway made it his business to find out, and he was at the airport to meet me. I’ll never forget that.”

Bishop Timothy Lyne, at Bishop Conway’s request, was to officiate at the Aug. 12 wake service. He recalled Bishop Conway’s ability to bring people together, and said “He was a man of compassion and good judgement.” He also paid tribute to him as an administrator, “He was wonderful at summing up things and moving meetings along, with a unique ability to be firm yet kind. He is going to be missed.”