New beginning in her 70s and still at work
Sister Winifred Mahar of Newtown. Wellington, who is now in her eighties, began a new life as a community worker in 1973.
For many people, her record of fifty years in teaching would have seemed enough on which to retire. But Sister Winifred tackled her task with enthusiasm, and has no regrets.
“I was due to return to Sydney where I had spent many happy years teaching.” she recalls. “But it was a time of great change. A general assembly of our nuns took place at which it was decided to encourage younger members who wanted to be more involved in local affairs.
I was asked to go with them into our first community house here in Newtown."
Now, Sister Winifred is the support person for the three other sisters who are active in the community. “I mind the house, answer the phone and the correspondence, talk to the people who call in and have a hot meal ready for the others every evening. I also tend our garden," she adds, indicating a vegetable patch below the house.
“We’re here to help people." she says, "Many people come here, some of them regularly, for a chat or maybe a meal.
“One of the sisters is the counsellor at our Island Bay school, another works in a community centre in Brooklyn, and the other is starting up a drop-in centre at St Mary-of-the Angels in Boycott St.”
Sister Winifred and her group began their life in community work in one of the flats in the old Newtown Fire Station — "Quite a community in itself.”
“We helped the families as much as we could. I used to look after the youngest of a family of eight while the mother went to work ... she followed me everywhere.” The Newtown Citizen’s Advice Bureau was begun at
that time, and Sister remembers the conditions they had to work in.
“We began in a very dilapidated old place next’to the adventure playground. Eventually it became impossible to run the C.A.B. there because of the kids and the lack of space and we moved to a room by the library until the new community centre was established in the old church in Colombo St.
“We used to hold weekly meetings on such topics as alcoholism and most of the' helpers did some training. I went to a course in community service at Polytech — listening skills, social resources in the community and so on. There were ten units over two years — very useful.”
Sister Winifred spent an afternoon at the C.A.B. every week until two years ago. “I think it’s very worthwhile: there are lots of sisters doing this kind of work, now who were formerly teaching. In the old days, you know,” she adds, “we all had to be teachers even if we-weren’t suited to it.
“We were perhaps one of the first enclosed orders of nuns to get out into the community — a lot of people found that very hard to accept at the time." Through their contacts at the bureau and the parish, the sisters also get to know of and visit the old. the sick and the lonely in the neighbourhood. “There's not so much contact with young people now, but in the early seventies there were a lot of young people wandering around the country.
"They would come and talk themselves out until the small hours.
“We used to have spare rooms too, for people who had just come out of hospital, to give them a chance to adjust to normal life again, but there isn't enough space now five of us are living here."
Would Sister, rather have gone back to Sydney in 1973 after leaving her last teaching position in the order's Christchurch school? “When they asked me to help start our work in the
community, I said I will if you want me to, and I certainly have no regrets. I am very glad, to have found this second vocation. But I would have found something to do over there too — I
certainly wouldn't have sat back and done nothing." And what of the future? “We live until we die, don't we?" says Sister Winifred. "I hope to keep going, if the Lord gives me strength."
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