Devoted lay woman is a treasure and role model for Alaskan Catholics

CatholicAnchor.org
As a young girl growing up in Western Washington, Beverly Walsh didn’t imagine her life ahead: a journey into the Catholic Church, a marriage that would take her to Alaska and produce eight children including a son who is a priest, and a faith commitment that would establish her as a leading woman in the Catholic Church in Southcentral Alaska.

FULL-FLEDGED PARTNER

But no one is given a glimpse into the future. So, when she headed out to a church dance with a girlfriend one evening more than 65 years ago, she didn’t know a young Irish Catholic journeyman carpenter from Alaska named Leo Walsh, visiting his parents in Washington, would meet her there and change her life completely.

“He was living in Alaska, sent up there by the Army,” she recalled. “He saw the potential for a builder up here.”

Alaska wasn’t a state yet, and Anchorage was not the seat of an archdiocese. The territory was rife with opportunity for a man with carpentry skills and a wife who would become his full-fledged partner in business as well as life.

But first there was the courtship.

“My father didn’t like preachers,” recalled Walsh, who grew up in a home without religion. Her mother had left the family when Beverly was 17.

“I had four younger sisters, and I was ‘mom’ for a few years.”

The situation was difficult but forged strength in Walsh.

“It was a great lesson,” she said. “You can do what you have to do. I felt a stigma and it took me a while to get over that. But I learned that none of us is pushed to our full potential. We have to step up to the plate.”

FAITH & WORKS

Despite the reluctance of her father, a Danish-born immigrant, to embrace organized religion, Walsh had already been exploring faith at a Lutheran girlfriend’s church. It was at a church dance where she met her future husband. She became a Catholic at age 20, and married soon after.

“We started out our first year moving houses out of downtown Anchorage,” she said. In the early 1950s, residents were leaving the downtown area to make room for local businesses.

“We moved about 114 houses that year,” Walsh said.

It was the beginning of their family construction company, which eventually built the Whittier school and spent more than 35 years working in the Aleutians. There were other interests as well, including a large dairy farm in Washington.

Walsh handled the company’s bookkeeping and accounting and established herself as a well-known local businesswoman.

And through all this, she and Leo had eight children. A boy, Stephen, came first. Six daughters followed and then the baby — also named Leo, who is now a priest in the Archdiocese of Anchorage.

How did she do it all?

“I was fortunate to have live-in help,” Walsh said. “And your husband has to be on your side.”

Despite her many commitments, Walsh devoted increasing energy to the church she had joined as a young woman.

FOUNDING BISHOP’S ATTIC

In 1971, several women, including Walsh, founded the Bishop’s Attic thrift shop. Today, with the proliferation of second hand stores, it is difficult to imagine the impact the Bishop’s Attic made, but over the years it has contributed over $11.5 million in donations to the archdiocese and continues to be a source of revenue.

The Anchorage Archdiocese was created in the late 1960s. That’s when Minnie Swalling – the “spark plug” for the Attic, Walsh calls her, approached Archbishop Joseph Ryan with a request. Could they borrow $700 to rent space for a thrift shop to benefit the archdiocese?

A small office space was secured right behind the Buckaroo Club, still operating in Spenard, and the women, who at that time were all volunteers, kept the keys to the Attic in the cash register at the bar. It didn’t take long to repay the archbishop’s loan. Eventually the shop moved to a site on Fireweed Lane and eventually its present location on Gambell Street.

After all these years, Walsh still does the accounting, payroll and business affairs for the Attic.

She has also been active in her parish, Our Lady of Guadalupe Co-Cathedral, since its beginning. When the parish built a multi-purpose room to serve as an interim worship area in the years before the present church was built, the Walsh family stepped up.

“Our company built the Lunney Center at cost,” she said.

Walsh served on the board of Catholic Social Services for thirty-two years, and was a member of the Archdiocesan Finance Council for more than 20.

GRATEFULLY GIVING BACK

What prompts this commitment?

“We were so blessed,” Walsh said, and gratitude to God demands a response.

“We had eight healthy children,” she said, and those children survived the 1964 Alaskan earthquake.

“We were the last house that didn’t go into the inlet on our street,” she recalled.

Like many, she remembers her exact location when the quake struck. On that Good Friday afternoon, she was at the Piggly Wiggly grocery (then near the present Bear Tooth Theatre Pub), on the peanut butter and jelly aisle, looking for mint jelly to accompany the family’s annual Easter leg of lamb.

Fortunately, her husband was home that afternoon as crevasses came within five feet of the house, Walsh explained.

“We’ve never bought a leg of lamb since,” she laughed.

Tragedy struck in 1999 when her husband Leo, an avid hunter, was killed in a small plane crash. Walsh continued to guide their company.

“I didn’t fall into the widow’s pity thing,” she said.

‘EVERYONE IS A ROLE MODEL’

Beside gratitude, Walsh cited the influence of other strong Catholic women, role models, in forging her own faith commitment, women like an aunt who was a Catholic and helped her with her wedding, and the women of Holy Family – the only Catholic church in town when she arrived.

“They were a bunch of pioneers,” she said. “They really took me under their wing. I’m a firm believer that everyone is a role model — either a good one or a bad one. Someone’s watching. You don’t realize you may be a role model for someone and you don’t even know who it is.”

In the no-nonsense voice of a woman who took on a big role when she was 17, Walsh said, “There are jobs to be done and somebody’s got to do them. If you’re on this earth you’d better be making a contribution.”

Walsh still lives in the same Turnagain area home where her family survived the earthquake. She turned 85 last month and has 23 grandchildren and 20 great-grandchildren with another due soon.