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Our Rich History: What happens in Vegas won’t stay there if Mother Teresa has anything to say about it


By Paul A. Tenkotte
Special to NKyTribune

“So much fur, so little sin,” the taxi driver chuckled as Helen McNeeve Theissen (1906-2005) and her sister, Rosemary McNeeve (1914-2012) got out of his cab in Las Vegas, Nevada. The two wealthy sisters laughed in unison with him, realizing his witty take on a common expression at that gambling and entertainment mecca of the West, “So little fur, so much skin.”

It was 1960, and Helen and Rosemary of Covington were attending the national convention of the National Council of Catholic Women. In fact, Helen was president of the 13,000-chapter, 9-million-member NCCW. The theme of the convention that year was “Women in the Sixties.”

Helen had been working assiduously with Eileen Egan (1912-2000) of the national headquarters of Catholic Relief Services in Washington, D.C. to bring a little-known nun, Mother Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997), to speak at the Las Vegas convention.

Helen Theissen, left, Rev. William Cleves, center, and Rosemary McNeeve. (Photo provided)

Helen Theissen, left, Rev. William Cleves, center, and Rosemary McNeeve. (Photo provided)

In 1928, feeling the call to be a missionary, Mother Teresa joined the Sister of Loreto in Ireland, and in the following year, she left for India. There, she taught history and geography at St. Mary’s High School in Calcutta, a school for wealthy girls. In 1946, while on a train, she received her “call within a call,” as she described, to serve the poorest of the poor.

The rest is history. Mother Teresa began to work among lepers, the ill, the orphaned, and the dying in Calcutta. She and the sisters of her new religious order, the Missionaries of Charity, literally picked the abandoned poor and dying out of the gutters of Calcutta. They tended to their physical and emotional wounds, always offering love, respect, and dignity. In 1979, Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize.

But the rest might not have been history, without the work of Eileen Egan and Helen Theissen, In fact, from the time of her arrival in India in 1929, Mother Teresa had never left. Her 1960 speech at the NCCW convention in Las Vegas was literally her introduction to the wider world.

Helen Theissen and Rosemary McNeeve became lifelong friends of Mother Teresa, sponsoring her work, and even advising her on various issues, such as her opening of a home for AIDS patients in New York City in the mid-1980s. AIDS was little understood then, and highly feared by many. Opposition to AIDS homes was rampant. Mother Teresa was undeterred, and Helen and Rosemary steadfastly supported her.

Some years ago to promote tourism, Las Vegas adopted the slogan “What happens in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas.” All of us know what that slogan truly means. But in Mother Teresa’s case, thanks to Helen Theissen, the exact opposite occurred. What happened in Las Vegas spread throughout the world—the message of a petite, frail nun who proved that you don’t have to look like somebody, talk like them, or even be the same religion as them, to love them unconditionally.

Paul A. Tenkotte is Professor of History and Director of the Center for Public History at NKU. With two other well-known regional historians, James C. Claypool and David E. Schroeder, he is a co-editor of the new 450-page Gateway City: Covington, Kentucky, 1815-2015, now available at your local booksellers, the Center for Great Neighborhoods in Covington and online sellers. This is part of a regular series especially for the NKyTribune.


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