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Stories from Cold Springs
This is a storytelling podcast that celebrates the creativity in everything from the mundane to the extraordinary. Creativity knows no bounds, and Stories from Cold Springs nurtures the story in all of us.
Listening to the host, J Stephen Beam, makes you want to grab a cup of sweet tea and join him on a wrap-around porch in Mississippi. The hours feel like minutes and you can't wait for the next visit (episode).
Stories from Cold Springs
Father Tommy Conway: From Irish Farm Boy to Beloved MS Priest
Send us your Christmas Stories
A priest’s journey rarely begins at the pulpit. Ours starts on a small Irish farm in County Galway, where thirteen children, a barter ledger at the grocer, and a windowless scullery kept life running without cash or convenience. Father Tommy Conway opens up about a way of life built on chores, prayer, and community—then shows how Ireland’s commitment to free education and EU investment vaulted a rural nation into a global workforce. The contrast is striking: horses and harrows traded among neighbors become modern careers at Boston Scientific and Pfizer, yet the heart of that village life remains.
We explore pivotal moments that chiseled character: a house fire that flattened the family home during a church revival, the struggle of high school, the joy of seminary friendships, and the unexpected call to serve in Mississippi. Tommy recalls early assignments on the Gulf Coast, years as a university chaplain, and a habit of answering every hospital request without checking denomination. The story blends humor and candor—yes, bacon and cabbage, not corned beef—and paints a tender picture of homesickness that never fully leaves, even as new roots take hold in Hattiesburg.
The capstone is the founding of St. Fabian in West Hattiesburg: donated land with a name that honors a beloved nun, a bishop’s simple “You decide,” and a parish that now hums with dozens of ministries. Local artist Kim Garraway Braille’s 21-foot “happy Jesus” mural turns a sanctuary into a welcome, a landmark that signals joy to anyone walking through the doors.
Suppose you’re curious about Irish rural traditions, the power of education, Catholic ministry in the American South, or how a person builds communities. In that case, this story delivers a warm, grounded look at service and belonging.
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Be sure to listen on Christmas Eve for a special episode of Stories from Cold Springs. Your favorite SFCS guests share their favorite Christmas memories!
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Links to Stephen's incredible novels:
The Death Letter
The Bondage of Innocents
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Stories from Cold Springs, the podcast that examines storytelling and creativity. Thank you for joining us. Our guest today is a special person to me and thousands of other people in our area. Father Tommy Conway. Thanks, Father Tommy, for stopping by.
SPEAKER_02:Delighted to be here. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01:There's so much I don't know about you. Tell us a little bit about your younger years, where you were born, how you were raised, and that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I was born back in 1961 in a little village crossroads in Ireland called Newbridge in County Galway. It's on the west coast of Ireland. And I was raised on a farm, a small farm with uh a big family. Uh my parents had uh ten boys and three girls. I'm right in the middle. There are six older than me and six younger than me. And with a very simple way of life, uh electricity was relatively new, television was rare, it was some TVs in the villages, cars were scarce, and uh bank accounts were very limited. Um but we lived on a family farm where we raised a lot of our own food, plowed the land and sowed vegetables, corn, oats, barley, wheat. We had uh potatoes and all kinds of vegetables, all year round, seasonal vegetables. We had our own hogs and our own sheep and our own uh beef cattle, and we had chickens and ducks and turkeys and geese. So we we really didn't need a bank account. My parents sold things to the local store. There was no money exchange. Every family had a book in the local grocery store, so we would bring in eggs, and we that was put in the book that we were owed for eggs, and then my parents would buy the necessities, flour. We made our own butter every Saturday. That was our tradition, that we we uh milk the cows, we send away milk to the creamery, uh uh, sold that for a living. And uh generally the boys worked the farm, everybody had their chores, and the girls did a lot of the inside work with mother. And um it was a great simple way of life at the time. Most people in our area had large families. It was rare for anybody to have less than five children, so having thirteen was not unusual. A family up the road, the Noftons had twenty-one children and uh all around us those big families. For those families that didn't have children, especially sons, we were hired out to to neighbors to help with their farm work with raising cattle or milking cows for them, or when it came time for saving uh father for the cattle for the winter, the hay, saving the hay at the time, we went and helped our neighbours as well. So it was a great way of life. And not all the farmers could own their own, you needed two horses for ploughing. Uh, you were lucky to have one, and so you were in co. So um my father had a plough and my our neighbors had a harrow. So they borrowed our plough and our horse, and we borrowed their horse and their harrows. It was a great simple way of life where donkeys and and horses were valuable at the time before tractors became more common, and um we had a great way of life. My parents, neither one of them got a high school education. They both went to elementary school. High school was not available for them, but when we came along, uh my parents put great emphasis on education. My father worked in England for a while looking after horses, and then he came back to Ireland to our small farm, about 35 acres, and he farmed the land. And uh my mother, when she was 17, had a twin sister who's still alive, and my mother Nora and her sister Greta decided they both wanted to be nurses, even though they didn't have a high school education. And they applied to university and both were accepted with an elementary school education, or we call it national school in Ireland, and both went on to become nurses and made careers out of the nurses. So we it was a great, great way of life. My mother obviously had started having babies very early on, and so she spent most of her nursing days in our home nursing us. So it was it's very simple, very straightforward way of life. I remember when we got our first television, I remember we got our first refrigerator. We had a special room in the house, uh, it was called a scullery. Uh it was a back room, it was a flat roof and no windows, and it was stayed cold all all year round. Even in the hottest day of the year, that room would be cold. In there we kept clean water, milk, cheese, butter, all of the things that now we would put in a refrigerator were kept in that room at the back. So it was it was a great little room to have. Uh we killed a pig twice a year. Very different than Mississippi. In Mississippi, people um usually smoke the meat to preserve it. In Ireland we use salt. Every farmhouse had a salt box, and you would put uh in the first days after killing a pig you had delicious pork, but then you would put the pork in the salt bacon, a layer of salt, uh a layer of bacon, a layer of salt, a layer of bacon, and it preserved it. And that's people when they think of Irish here in Mississippi or in the United States, they always say about corn, beef and cabbage. We never had corned beef and cabbage growing up because it wasn't available to us with lots of beef. It was the closest thing that Irish people could get to what we call bacon and cabbage, which is really really salt, pork, and cabbage. That's what we were raised on in the country in Ireland. So to this day that's that's one of my favorite meals.
SPEAKER_01:When I was growing up in North Mississippi, we salted our meat the same way rather than smoke it. I don't know why. I guess that's what my father knew.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_01:And it had been passed down through the generations. So looking back, as you go back and visit, and I'm I know that you do from time to time, but has it totally changed there in your farming area?
SPEAKER_02:Yes, it's totally changed. There there are very few people, especially in the West of Ireland. Most of us grew up with the on the family farms, it was enough to keep us going. Nowadays, in the west of Ireland, especially, there are very few people farming full-time. Uh my the land is now in my nephew's uh name, but he's a full-time plumber, so he works uh at a full-time job plumbing, but he raises sheep on the land as almost as a pastime. So it's very much changed. The best thing that happened to Ireland was number one in 1921, coming out from under British rule, gaining our independence from England, and number two in the 1970s, joining what was then the EC, the European Community, which is now the European Union. And we were the poorest country in the EC at the time. The other rich European countries poured money into Ireland for infrastructure and it changed life completely. The second thing, back in the nineteen fifties and sixties, Ireland put great emphasis on education, and they decided back then the government that everyone, no matter what they had, rich or poor, were entitled to free education. And to this day there is free education offered to everybody in Ireland. So we were poor, but every one of us could have gone to university if we wanted to. We didn't all end up doing that because tradesmen are very important, electricians are very important, plumbers are very important, plasterers are very important, block layers are a necessity. And so my older sister did go to college, and my next sister, they both Marion is a school teacher and Margaret is a librarian. But my parents put great emphasis on education for all of us, and everything was included across the board, being a priest, being a nun, being a teacher, being a nurse, being a doctor, all those things were included when my parents talked about our education and they made sure that all of us got an education. I'm proud to say that every one of us are working people. There's some of us already retired, some of us getting close to it. And then my family expanded beat time. I have 31 nieces and nephews, and every one of them live in Ireland, and all of them that are eligible to work are all working at jobs in Ireland. So the economy has changed completely. Going back to education, why it's so important. In the 1960s, 70s and 80s, when the United States was looking for an educated workforce for pharmaceuticals and for computers, they found them in Ireland. And to this day, those plants are huge. Dell, Boston Scientific, Metronic all have huge plants in Ireland because they needed an educated workforce. Ireland provided it and they offered good, decent jobs with benefits. And so all those things raised the way of life in Ireland to improve for everybody.
SPEAKER_01:It would seem to me, I'm I'm assuming something, sometimes you shouldn't, but you were a church-going family, strong in a Catholic faith.
SPEAKER_02:Aaron Ross Powell Very much so. When I went to the seminary, I was uh seventeen years of age. I had never encountered a non-Catholic in my life before I went to the seminary. Where I grew up from the Cromwellian days, Cromwell had a saying to hell or to connuct. So for Irish people getting off the lands that they could be slaughtered and he believed they were going to go to hell because Catholics didn't go to heaven, or they could go to Connucht. That was an area on the west coast of Ireland, and I'm from Connucht. So there was no English people. The English people were generally the non-Catholics, so everybody that went to the West of Ireland were Catholic and they stayed there. So yeah, very much so. Not going to church was not an option. We didn't have a Saturday evening mass at the time. We had two masses on Sunday morning. And we had basically we had three sets of clothes. We had our Sunday going to mass clothes. They were only used for going to church. We had our farm clothes and we had our school clothes. And that was it, and were passed down from one generation to the next, and it was you never rarely got new stuff. It was always passed on. So we went to church every week and it was not an option. Every single night of our lives, my parents made us get down on our knees at night and we prayed together as a family every night of our lives. It didn't matter who came in to visit neighbors, uncles, aunts, they knelt on the concrete floor with us and they they prayed with us. So yes, very much Catholic way of life going to church and uh going to school as well.
SPEAKER_01:Going back just a little, how big was your house that you lived in?
SPEAKER_02:Initially, the house that we lived in was very small. My grandmother lived with us and she had the biggest room in the house over. So when my grandmother died, there was great rejoicing among us boys because suddenly our way of life changed completely. We had a big room in the house where all boys were in together. Unfortunately, in 1976, there was a revival, I would call it, going on in our local church. All of us were at church except my youngest brother and sister on the 3rd of May in 1976, and our house caught on fire and it was burned to the ground. My brother and sister were rescued by a neighbor, so we rebuilt and we then we had a four-bedroomed house for all of us. So at that stage, there was my mum and dad had their own room, and then the girls had a room and the boys had two rooms. So we had plenty of room. We had lap of luxury for starting in 1976.
SPEAKER_01:You enjoy school?
SPEAKER_02:I very much enjoy school, yeah. Uh now high school, I struggled a little bit in high school, probably depending on who you'd ask. Maybe that family fire I was very influential. I was 14 years of age at the time, 15 years of age that year. So high school I struggled, but then when I went to college, I loved it. I thrived in college. I made some of the best friends that I have to this day. We stay in touch with them. And it was seven really seven years. I was six years of seminary college at St. Patrick's in Carlo. After five years, I came to Mississippi for 12 months to make sure this is where I wanted to land and that I was making the right decision. And then I went back to college for one more year before being ordained in 1986.
SPEAKER_01:How far was the college from your home?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, it was about a three and a half hour drive, and cars were scarce. So when we we didn't have much time off, we got home for Christmas, we got home for Easter and summer. So generally there was there were trains. We get the train, we couldn't really afford the train, but we would come home. People were very generous and giving us a lift along the way. And sometimes it might take six hours, but we we'd always get there.
SPEAKER_01:You know, growing up yours, what was the weather like on on your farm area?
SPEAKER_02:Aaron Powell The weather hasn't changed much. The temperatures are rising in Ireland. This past summer was the highest temperatures on record. They started taking records back in uh 1900. So it's it's the it was the warmest summer in 125 years. But generally you had spring, summer, autumn, and winter very distinguished. Springtime was wonderful because from once St. Patrick's Day came, you could see the evenings getting longer. Now people don't fully understand. Obviously, Ireland has the same amount of daylight and darkness as Mississippi. It's just different. In the summertime, it's daylight until midnight. On the twenty first of June, the longest day of the year, its days daylight till midnight. And it's dark for a couple of hours and it's back daylight again at four o'clock in the morning. However, in the wintertime, it's dark at four o'clock in the afternoon until nine o'clock in the morning. So from once St. Patrick's Day came around, you could see every evening a kind of a two-minute stretch in the evenings, and we look forward to that time. And then uh obviously our nicest months really were May, June, July. Daffodils are wonderful flowers. Daffodils are the first flowers to appear in Ireland, usually in March. The ground can be cold, the ground can be flooded, even your garden could be flooded, and those daffodils show up their heads. Beautiful yellow flowers. And when you see the daffodils coming, you know that spring is here and summer is coming. And in the summertime, we always had a chance we had to save what we call peat. It's turf, we call it turf for burning in the fires. So every every summer we managed to harvest that, and even when the weather was sometimes showery and stuff, we had to have hay for the cattle. Sometimes the hay could be cut as many as seven days. But we always we never had a summer when we didn't get to save the hay. So temperatures to this day, very rarely do we get above 75. The humidity is high, but you don't know it's high. The humidity in Mississippi could be 95%, but if it's 60 degrees, you don't notice the humidity. It's the heat that drives the humidity crazy. So it was a lovely way of life. In the winter time, we always had fires. The stove is still in my the home that we built in 1976, the stove that my mother cooked on and that she baked her bread in. That's still the stove in the family kitchen. I still use it when I'm home on holidays. There were three rooms. We had a dining room with a sitting room and with a kitchen. And all three of those rooms had a fire. So basically, we would have a fire in those three rooms, and it kept the rest of the house nice and cozy. And long winter nights, there was great storytelling and visiting, playing cards. I grew up. My parents loved to play cards. They would go to the pub, and my father and mother, probably back in the 1970s, they got a motorcycle, little Honda 50. They were a great commodity in Ireland, and my parents would go a couple of nights a week off to the pub, local pub, and play cards. And so I grew up in that kind of an environment playing cards with my brothers and sisters and neighbors and family.
SPEAKER_01:Did you have snow?
SPEAKER_02:Yes. We basically had some snow every year. Now it's not as much, maybe every four or five years. We have frost, guaranteed some frost for three or four months of the year. But not enough snow took us snow skiing, even though we have plenty of mountains, because the mountains are on the sea around the coastland, so we never got enough snow there. Inland there was enough snow, but uh not enough to go skiing, but enough to to enjoy making a snowman or a snowwoman and throwing snowballs and having fun like that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:How far were you from the coast?
SPEAKER_02:Thirty miles inland from Galway, the coast of Galway. We were probably one and a half miles from school, but we walked to school. That was just the way of life. Everybody allowed enough time to walk to school. Sometimes the milkman would come along and he'd a big open trailer and he'd let us hop up in the trailer to take us home from school, especially, and things like that, you know. So it was it was a great way.
SPEAKER_01:As a child and as a teenager, what kind of games did you all play?
SPEAKER_02:Well, we have in Ireland there are very different games than here. We have a game called football. It's very different. It's not soccer. It took us a long time to embrace soccer and rugby because traditionally they were called there were English games, and we didn't embrace anything English at all. There was a game called rugby. It's a lot like American football. In fact, American football is kind of copycatted off rugby. We had rugby, but we also played hurling. It's a game you play with a a wooden stick and a small ball, and it's very lively, very fast, uh very few injuries in it, even though you you think Irishmen with a stick and a ball at the dangerous, but it's not. And then football was very common. Soccer began to come in more and more in the eighties and nineties, and soccer and rugby are common today. But the number two sports are are Gaelic football, played with a round ball, like a soccer ball, uh but different than the soccer rules. You can touch it and kick it and punch it, and then hurling with the sticks and then hurling ball, like a like a baseball.
SPEAKER_01:So there were uh probably organized leagues for that, but as kids you just played pickup games.
SPEAKER_02:Correct. Just around the schools always had games. We so we had time in school to go out and kick ball during our breaks, and the schools played each other. I was at Winfield National School, we played Killine School, we played Ballat Lee School, we played Balligar School, but just uh leagues, and then the villages had leagues. There was a Gaelic Athletic Association set up back in the 1800s, uh GAA, and to this day they're very popular. That's the national sport. People are shocked to find out in Ireland there are no professional sports. Nobody gets played to pay to play sports in Ireland. It's a it's a privilege and an honor to play for your county. So if you get selected to play for your county, you might be a school teacher. You could win what we call the Irish Super Bowl on a Sunday, and Monday you're back teaching in school. Or you could be a guard that she con a policeman or a a priest even and beyond the be selected for the county team, and that's an honor and a privilege, but no payment.
SPEAKER_01:How many people in the nearest village to where you grew up?
SPEAKER_02:The little village was a mile away, Newbridge. There was only uh the population was small. There was uh two grocery stores, which were also two pubs, the post office and the church. That was it. The local the village Montbellou was a little bit larger, maybe a thousand people. It had a little bit bigger grocery store, more pubs, hardware store, things like that. It also had a mill, which was very important because we would bring oats and barley to the mill to be ground up to bring back for feed for the animals. So there was a mill in almost in every town and village you'd find a mill.
SPEAKER_01:Is there much timber in Ireland?
SPEAKER_02:Yes. Lots and lots of timber. Um a lot of hardwoods, oak, ash, sycamore trees. Pine trees are not native to Ireland, but they're planting them more and more. At one stage, Ireland was eighty percent forestry, but nowadays it's about fourteen. The government are trying to get up to sixteen, but uh it's it's about um uh twelve or fourteen at the moment.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell Is the population increasing?
SPEAKER_02:Yes. The population of Ireland has increased dramatically. Even since the nineteen eighties, from a population of about four and a half million, it's now about seven and a half million. It's uh Northern Ireland population has increased. There are there are thirty-two counties in total in Ireland. Uh twenty-six are under Irish rule, six are c called Northern Ireland. It's not all of Northern Ireland because Donegal is right up there with them, but it's the northeast corner of Ireland, and those six counties are still under British rule. But when you combine the South and the North, which we do, it's one island, it's about seven and a half million people right now. And growing.
SPEAKER_01:Immigration, is that why you're growing?
SPEAKER_02:Immigration is not growing anymore. Immigration, young people back in the 60s and 70s and 80s immigrated because they had to. Nowadays they immigrate because they want to. My uh niece went for 12 months to Australia. She's back home now, she's a doctor. My nephew has a good job in Ireland, Boston Scientific, but he wants to go travelling. He's going to Australia for a year, and Boston Scientific safety's job for him, he's with his girlfriend. My niece, she's a nurse, she's um a psychiatric nurse, qualified two years ago, has a good job in Ireland. She's going next week, she's going to Australia for a year with her boyfriend because she wants to go to Australia. But otherwise, there are lots and lots of jobs in Ireland with Pfizer, Metronic, Boston Scientific, Apple. All those companies are huge in Ireland. The pharmaceutical companies from America and uh the all the computer companies as well offer great jobs.
SPEAKER_01:Are there other priests in your family?
SPEAKER_02:I have two first cousins who are priests. My mother had three first cousins. My mother's maiden name was Crow, and she had three first cousins who were priests, two of them in California, one of them back in Ireland. They're all dead. In fact, my my parents were married by my mother's first cousin who was a priest called Dean Crowe, and they were married in a church that he he was the pastor of in Athlone in County Westmead. In my village, local village we'll say, uh there's probably twenty villages all around. And every one of those villages had three or four priests and three or four nuns. It was not if you go next door to my house, as um Margaret Crahen, that's very next door, she's a nun. The Heinz's house is next to that, they had two nuns. Cunningham's is next to that, they had a nun in their family. She's still in Texas and San Antonio, the Holy Spirit sisters. Then the Craheon House is next. There were two generations of nuns in the Crahen house. Then uh the Mokers had two priests. It's just it's just not not unusual. Um at one stage in Mississippi, eighty percent of the the priests that clergy were Irish. Now it's about five. Yeah. But but people wonder about all that about how come we don't have our own. We just don't. The United States in general has never had enough Catholic priests. Maybe the East Coast at one time did. We've always depended on on foreigners to bring the faith. Back in the days it was Irish and Italians and the French. Now it's the Indians and the Mexicans and the South Americans and the Polish that are providing the religion.
SPEAKER_01:So why Mississippi for you?
SPEAKER_02:Good question. It's like recruiting in football. They had a priest uh going around. At the time when I went to the seminary, there were ten major seminaries in Ireland. And my local church didn't need me, they didn't want me. When I went to the seminary, I didn't know where I was going to be a priest. I I just kind of thought they'd assign me someplace, but um I wasn't long in the seminary when they contacted me from Mississippi. Father Louis Lohan was the guy who was going around from school to school, and he contacted me and said, Hey, we heard you don't have a diocese, would you consider coming to Mississippi? And I said, Yeah. And and that has been 150 years of unbroken priests, a line of unbroken priests coming to Mississippi. Catholic Church is very new in Mississippi, it's only 150 years old. There was a bishop, John Schantz. He came down from Baltimore and he went to Ireland and he recruited two priests. And then they in turn recruited others. So for 150 years, basically, we have been coming to Mississippi. So they recruited me. They didn't promise me a new car or two million dollars like they do now, but they I wasn't that good, Steve. Well, your timing was wrong.
SPEAKER_01:About how many other priests with Irish background are in Mississippi?
SPEAKER_02:Nowadays there's only maybe ten of us. There's probably ten retired and ten active. At that point, as I said, there were probably sixty, seventy Irish priests in the state of Mississippi.
SPEAKER_01:So when you came to Mississippi, did you ever go to any other states or just to Mississippi?
SPEAKER_02:I I was very blessed. I I became chaplain. I was at Southern Miss for for 14 years as the chaplain for the college students. Part of that chaplaincy was under Coach Jeff Bauer. He asked me to be chaplain for the football team, and I was that for five years. So during that time, I went to many different states. I have gone to different states for weddings, for funerals, for baptisms, but my ministry has always been in Mississippi. But I've been I've probably been to visit mm close to 40 states over in the last 40 years.
SPEAKER_01:So when you first came to Mississippi, where was your post at that time?
SPEAKER_02:That's right. I was appointed to Sacred Heart in Hattiesburg, and I was an associate pastor with Monsignor John Scannon, and the longest an associate could do at that time was four years. So I completed my four years. Then I moved to St. John's in Gulfport, which is right on the water in the Gulf Coast. I was there actually when the first casino, the Grand Casino opened in Gulfport, Mississippi, back in 1994. I was there from 19 to 94, so at that time the casino opened. And then I went to Columbia and to Tylertown. I had two churches about 23 miles apart. I was I lived in Columbia, stayed some in Tylertown, but pastored both those churches. And then I got the call to come to the University of Southern Mississippi as a chaplain, and I had 14 wonderful years there. That's when I got to know a lot of people. But so I've been in Hattiesburg for almost 40 years total, uh back and forth. And since then I've been at St. Fabian for eleven.
SPEAKER_01:So that was St. Thomas.
SPEAKER_02:That's right. St. Thomas Aquinas. Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_01:That's how I met you was through athletics at uh Southern Miss.
SPEAKER_02:Southern Miss, that's correct. We sure did.
SPEAKER_01:What about, especially as a young man, as a priest moving here?
SPEAKER_02:Homesickness, did you Yes, uh very much so. But I think the fact that I'd been here for twelve months, I knew what I was coming to, that really helped me. I came over in September of 86 to take up my assignment. And in May of 1987, my father and mother came to visit me for the first time. They came back a second time in the 1990s. I think the fact that they came and they saw I was happy, they saw that I had so many good friends that really helped me. But every year leaving home has always been difficult. And I thought that when my parents would die that that would change completely. But in actual fact, I think it has gotten worse. I'm very close to my nieces and nephews and to their children. In fact, this past summer I went and stayed with several of my nieces and nephews and their children, and I get very attached to them. And so it's hard to say goodbye and it's hard to come back. But I always say to them, I have to go back to come home again. So it it works out fine, and I think God has a way of making me happy here to to know that I'm I'm very settled here.
SPEAKER_01:That's wonderful. I do know uh what a blessing you've been to this entire area, not just to the Catholic community either.
SPEAKER_02:Aaron Powell Well, I've I have a lot of friends and I've never I I never looked on people as to whether they were Catholic or not. Anytime if I re get a request for some to pray for somebody, I always ask, are they in hospital? Yes, which hospital are they in? Forest General or or Merit? And I'll always go visit them and I'll say I was praying for you, so I decided to come to see you. So it doesn't matter. And people are when they're sick, they appreciate a prayer. And I've been a lot involved with a lot of funerals of non-Catholics, and I I don't distinguish my main ministry is to Catholics, of course, but at football games and uh all those outings I really enjoy uh the community. And Hattiesburg has been a wonderful community for me. Great people, so friendly, great food, great families, and so it has been a great blessing in my life.
SPEAKER_01:Tell us a little bit about your new church, Saint Fabian.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, interesting. Uh back eleven years ago, where we had had land for some time uh for a new church in West Hattiesburg, a man called Richard Fabian McCarthy donated land, uh twenty-five acres. If there was ever a church to be built, there would be only uh the only clause would be it would be called St. Fabian. And the reason for that is when he was in school at Sacred Heart a hundred years ago, he had a nun called Sister Fabian, who was his favorite sister, and he wanted to honor her by calling it St. Fabian. And so the bishop decided, Bishop Roger Morin, now at the time, God rest him, that it was time to make a move on that. And so I was in Rome actually studying. Uh well, it wasn't really studying, I was in Rome on a sabbatical for 10 weeks, which was wonderful. And uh I got an email to say that he was appointed me as the founding pastor of St. Fabian in West Hatysburg. So I called him because I was in shock and I said, Um, where am I going to have church? He said, You decide. I said, How am I going to pay for it? He said, You decide. I said, Where am I going to live? And he said, You decide. He said, Father Tommy, he said, There's no book written on this stuff. He said, But he said, I trust that you're going to figure it out. And I did, and it's been wonderful. And so we have a wonderful church, probably about 600 active members, maybe 700. And um we have probably 50 different ministries in Lamar County, and we're we're thriving. So I'm very happy with it.
SPEAKER_01:I hear you have a 21-foot-tall Jesus uh in your truth.
SPEAKER_02:I do, yeah. That would be a very interesting lady to talk to. Kim Garraway Braille, when we're building our new building, it's it's we're using it as as a sanctuary right now, but eventually it's going to be our fellowship hall. And it can seat 500 people very comfortably around round tables. So when we were getting in close to the end, I was like, oh, we need something. I was big into local arts, and I knew about Kim, Kim Garraway Braille. And so I contacted her and I said, Kim, can you meet me at the building? The weather was messy, it was red dirt outside. It was hard to get and out of the building without making a mess with red clay. So Kim met me with her rubber boots and She came inside and we stood back at the back of the the building and there's a massive big wall up in front. I said, Kim, I want a Jesus on that wall. And she said, Oh yeah? What kind of a Jesus do you want? I said, I want a happy Jesus because I said this is going to be greeting people for for weddings and christenings and parties and so she said, Let me pray on it. That was on a Thursday. And on Monday morning she came back and she handed me a piece of paper and there was a happy Jesus on there and I said, That's it. And I went that night to the building committee and I passed around at the table and it was dead silence. Nobody could believe what she came up with. So then we hired a scaffolding for her and in five days she painted a twenty-one feet high Jesus from a scaffolding. Imagine that. It's just un unbelievable what she did. And she's still herself. She'll she'll call me and say, Hey, hey, is anybody in the building? My cousin is in from out of town. We have postcards made with it that we use for thank you notes. People absolutely love it. And if when we if we're on Facebook or on any social media, people say, Oh, that's same Fabian. We know the we know the resurrected happy Jesus that they have in that church. So it's it's wonderful. And Kim is a great lady.
SPEAKER_01:She is a wonderful painter. She's painted some murals here in in our town and all over the area. Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_01:We've come to the end of our time. Father Tommy Conway, thank you so much for stopping by. This has been most interesting. I always like to listen to people's stories, and you have a wonderful story.
SPEAKER_02:Glad to be with you. Thank you very much. And sometime if you want me back, I'll tell the full story of St. Fabian.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:God bless everybody.
SPEAKER_01:As always, we're so thankful that you've listened to our podcast. I always like to mention the fact I'm also an author, and uh you can find my books, two novels that are out there right now at Amazon, but also at your local stores. I encourage you to frequent your independent bookstores because those folks need our help and they keep communities vibrant. You can find them uh under J. Stephen Beam, The Death Letter and the Bondage of Innocence. Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next time.
SPEAKER_00:This episode of Stories from Cold Springs is brought to you by MCS Home Center, Bellevue. They're more than just a building supply store. They've got everything you need to make your house feel warm and welcoming. Located at 7329 US 98 in Hattersburg.
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