BRINGING THEM JOY
Retired Nurse Helps Refugees Adjust To Life In U.S., Feeds Hungry Children In Haiti
They call her Grandma. Noble Oo, 18, his sister Nary Oo, 15, and Paw Say, 15, have known Mary Lou Connors in Avon for more than a decade. She has been a guide for the three children and their parents, and for many others in what can be one of the most difficult journeys someone can make: coming to the United States as a refugee.
“My goal was to walk with them, walk through this new country,” Connors said. “And it’s been a hard walk.”
“Coming to the United States, we needed a guide,” Noble said. “That was Mary Lou. Grandma was there to show us the path. She’s been there for most of our lives.”
Noble, Nary and Paw are part of the Karen community, a group of people driven out of Myanmar by communist soldiers. Their families, and many other families, found shelter in refugee camps in Thailand. Each of the children was born in the camps before they immigrated to the U.S. legally through the Catholic Charities Refugees and Resettlement Program.
Connors was waiting for them with open arms.
“It was fulfilling a need, but also responding to a need of what it means to be Christian, what it means to be a person who cares about others,” she said.
The retired nurse is part of what she calls “a village of helpers,” a group of independent people who saw that this group of refugees was struggling and decided to help any way they could.
Connors embodied the grandmother role. She went to the Church of St. Ann with the community’s kids every week, took them on trips, cooked for them, and they, in turn, cooked for her.
She also brought pots, pans, dishes, kitchen appliances and school supplies to their apartments in Hartford.
“I remember standing on South Marshall Street with about 15 backpacks. Everyone just came and took one,” Connors said. At her church they collected backpacks and school supplies, both for the local community and refugees in Hartford.
“She basically offered us everything we need, like clothes — summer stuff and during winter she’d bring us winter stuff,” Noble said. “We couldn’t ask for more.”
Not everything she introduced to the community was popular. Connors said she taught them how to use toasters, but the Karen people preferred soft, white bread to hard toast. Highchairs didn’t last long in Karen households either. In their culture, babies are always held, passed around from one family member to another.
“They were lovely people… It was a lot of fun and it was very fulfilling to watch them adapt to the culture, and know that we could help,” Connors said. “It was a real education on both sides.”
The Rev. Joseph Cheah, a priest from Myanmar (then Burma), introduced Connors to the Karen community. Cheah is a professor at the University of St. Joseph and an assistant at the Church of St. Ann. Connors previously had helped African refugees settle in Hartford.
“I’ve always been fascinated by cultures,” Connors said, adding that she loves to listen to refugees’ stories. “You hear the differences, but more, you hear the similarities… So it closes the culture gap for both sides.”
And, she added, the refugees “were so incredibly grateful. They would always say, ‘You make us feel welcome.’ … They always had that gentle, warm way of making you feel like it mattered what you were doing, even if it was as simple as ‘these are winter socks.’”
“It was very cold,” Nary said about her first winter in the U.S. The Karen had never experienced cold weather before arriving in the U.S.
They faced other challenges beyond adjusting to the weather.
Bullies at school called the Karen kids names because they couldn’t speak English well. Appliances broke easily. The Oos’ oven never worked, Connors said.
The most difficult part was for their parents to find work, Nary said.
The refugees worked minimum wage jobs to support their families but it was barely enough to get by. And after six months, their subsidized rent for their apartments ended, Connors said.
There were smaller struggles too, like learning how to ride a bus, adjust a thermostat and what a “parking ban” was. A Karen man got his car towed twice during a snowstorm.
“That was an early lesson in ‘don’t take things for granted’ and try to think ahead to what they need to know,” Connors said.
She taught them practical things, but also ways to have fun. Connors took the kids on walks by the reservoir, swimming at another helper’s pool, on a trip to New York City and more.
“When we got to America, we would just stay home and do nothing. We didn’t know how to have fun. And Mrs. Mary Lou was there to show us how to have fun,” said Noble.
Connors’ selflessness and generosity have inspired Noble and Nary to give back.
“It’s definitely inspired me to help out around the community,” said Nary, who volunteers at a food pantry.
Connors also has gone to Haiti every year since 1983, when she first went as part of a medical mission. In the past six years she has visited twice a year and aligned with Friar Suppliers in Long Island who work in underserved areas in Haiti.
In 2014, Connors founded Helping Haitian Children, a nonprofit that provides medicine and education to children there.
The main problem in Haiti, Connors said, is the lack of food. When she returned from her annual trip to the country in June, she began a tuna drive because the kids’ diet often lacks protein.
Her nonprofit (helpinghaitianchildren.com) supplies the funds for a Haitian school to give 750 children a meal four days a week. It pays the tuition for 65 students, as school is not free in the Caribbean country. It also ships supplies, like shoes and the tuna.
The last time Connors was there, 221 orphans sang a song of gratitude for her and her charity. Recently, orphans have started to be placed with families in the country, instead of staying in orphanages. That, Connors said, is “a move in the right direction.”
Seeing orphans and other children without enough food to eat can be upsetting for some. But Connors says she keeps a saying from Mother Teresa in her heart that she often shares with fellow volunteers.
“‘Don’t bring them your tears. They have enough of their own. Bring them your joy,’” Connors said. “So my whole focus is about joy… I’ve been given enough to give it back.”
As chair of the social justice committee at St. Ann, Connors coordinates donations both for Haitian children and local refugees. She also visits women’s prisons once a month to help prisoners connect with one another and form trusting relationships. And she helps at food pantries.
For her service to the community, the Archdiocese of Hartford gave Connors its St. Joseph Medal in 2008, and the Rotary Foundation of Avon-Canton presented her with its Paul Harris Award in 2014.
“[It’s] gratifying to help others because you always get more than you give,” Connors said.
Rick Dubiel has known Connors for four or five years and helps her out by donating items for the refugee families and Haitian children.
“She just seems like a saint to me,” Dubiel said. “A saint who walks among us.”