14 • Intercom • Summer 2008

inTeRVieW cOnDucTeD By S. MaRy BODDe

S. Karen Hawver, principal of Holy Family School, a two-campus elementary school in Rochester/Rochester Hills, Mich., sat down to reflect on “meeting your grace,” an expression attributed to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. The school has 1,159 students in kindergarten through third grade at St. Andrew’s parish in Rochester and five miles away fourth through eighth grade at St. Mary’s parish in Rochester Hills. Her faculty numbers 114. More than 1,200 students are expected in the fall.

MB “You were originally a teacher.”

KH “I was a teacher nine years and a counselor five years prior to being a principal. I entered in 1961 and went out to teach in 1965, so that’s 43 years in education.”

MB “How long as principal?”

KH “My new school year will be my 30th year – 12 years at St. Dennis in Royal Oak, Mich., and this will be my 18th year at Holy Family.”

never afraid of a challengeMB “As you look back, what are the times when you have met your grace?”

KH “I guess probably so many times that I wasn’t conscious of it. My parents surely introduced me to my grace – my Catholic upbringing and our religion. Our family wasn’t any special religious family. My dad owned a bar, and we were a regular family, but that was a grace for me because I’ve just learned how to take things.

“The Sisters of Charity have put me in positions where my talents are used, and I just meet grace all the time.

“I think wherever you meet another person is where you meet your grace. In this situation, with all these parents, staff, teachers, children, I am very conscious of meeting my grace every time I meet one of them.

“Whether it’s to talk with, sing with, discipline or encourage the children, I try to do it gracefully because I feel that meeting your grace is meeting your God wherever He takes you. As the school year ends, you just always want to be conscious of that. I want to keep reminding my staff that we keep meeting our grace. We gracefully meet all that God presents to us; that’s how I see it.”

MB “I suspect that your music also brings you to your grace. How did that start?”

KH “I just always sang growing up – in my father’s bar, doing dishes, cleaning the house, and then in the Community. When I was in the juniorate, we had a choir of Sisters. I did a lot of singing with them.

“In my fifth or sixth year of teaching in Michigan, S. Katy O’Connor, a nurse at St. Joseph Hospital in Mount Clemens, asked me to visit a pediatrician who had contracted meningitis from one of her own patients. She was facedown on a bed that flipped, looking up at me through a mirror. S. Katy asked me to sing some songs to her, so I walked out of the view of her mirror and started singing. Then one of the nurses in the room asked me to sing at her wedding! That’s how I began singing weddings, and then teaching music in school. Music has always been a great expression of how I am, how God is. It’s a wonderful message to kids.”

MB “When did you take up the guitar?”S. Karen Hawver, principal of Holy Family School in Rochester/Rochester Hills, Mich., enjoys playing the guitar to her students.

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KH “When I was stationed in Chicago, Ill., at St. Sebastian’s, we were snowed in for one week. I found this old guitar in the attic and started to play it. I just taught myself. I didn’t know what the chords were called. To this day I can’t read music, but I have an ear, so I just started playing. Then I played with the kids. When I was transferred to Detroit, Mich., at Guardian Angels I actually taught guitar. I don’t play well, but I manage.”

MB “How do you manage being principal of two schools and two campuses?”

KH “I have an assistant principal at each campus. I spend a lot of time [at St. Mary’s] because most things that need to be looked after are with older kids. I go every day to the other campus, but we have one faculty with separate faculty meetings. On huge occasions we have all the schools go to Mass together.”

MB “On top of being a principal of two sites, you are a Network leader. How do you do all that?”

KH “I enjoy helping the Sisters. I like to make things a little easier for them, and I’m better at it in the summer than I am during the school year. I try to keep contact with them with little notes. If they need something they write or call me. I have a lot of help in that, too. I have all of Michigan, but I also have many in Ohio down through Dayton and Cincinnati. I get help from my other Network teammates down that way.”

MB “How do you think it was possible for you to become a principal?”

KH “I do not know except that I always thought I had some leadership qualities. When I was a counselor, people would come and ask for things that I was really unable to do because I wasn’t the leader. Then at Guardian Angels in Detroit, my principal, an Adrian Dominican Sister, would call on me to do lots of leadership things. She became ill, and I kind of finished the year for her.

“When that year was over, I thought I might as well do this myself, so I put my application in various places and then I ended up having five of them say ‘yes.’ I chose St. Dennis. It just seemed to fit. St. Dennis was a very happy experience for me. Then the Rev. Tim Babcock (I knew him at the neighboring parish in Royal Oak) found out that his principal at St. Andrew’s was leaving. He asked me to come and see what I thought of it because I had already been at St. Dennis 12 years. So I came out here and met the

staff, and they chose me. It’s been a happy, happy experience.

“I love the parents – how really selfless they are. This is an area of affluence but I have to say that they are the most selfless people I have ever met. They really take care of each other and the poor. I just find them so eager to learn. These parents are young and fun to work with. I think there are 13 parents here who were children at St. Dennis, and they now are parents of children who are in the school.”

MB “What do you think have been your greatest challenges?”

KH “I always think of a challenge as exciting. So anytime I was ever given anything to do, it just never seemed anything other than a new way of doing something – being a principal, being a Sister. I have maybe one year left here and that will be a challenge. I will welcome learning what’s next in my life. Maybe it’s something in the Community; maybe it’s taking a smaller school; maybe it’s working in this area. I’m going to leave myself open to God indicating for me what it might be.”

MB “What your next grace might be?”

KH “Yes, what my next grace will be. I’m really not afraid of anything. I don’t know how I got that way but I’ve never really been afraid of anything. I feel loved. I feel supported. I feel strong. I’m not always right, that’s for sure, but I just am not afraid to try or to make mistakes.”

S. Karen Hawver has been the principal of Holy Family School, a two-campus elementary in Rochester/Rochester Hills, Mich., for 17 years.