Eastern Oklahoma Catholic July/August 2012 : Page 12
YOUR STORIES Gregg Conway greets a resident of Tulsa Boys’ Home who is about to be reunited with his family. feature story Forgive us our trespasses Core Teaching of the Our Father is key to success in rehabilitation at Tulsa By Mason Beecroft | Photography by Dave Crenshaw Boys’ Home E 12 ntering the Chapel at Tulsa Boys’ Home (TBH), a framed picture of Jesus laughing greets the visitor. Gregg Conway, the executive director at Tulsa Boys’ Home for the past 15 years, explained that the picture was a gift from a family in Long Island, N.Y., who were instrumental in helping Mr. Conway through a difficult period of his life. “This picture was on their wall,” he said. “I was going through a hard period and this family helped me. I remember going to their house and staring at this picture of Jesus. It had a profound effect on me.” Mr. Conway is a lifelong Catholic. Origi-nally from Long Island, N.Y., his family was devout. As a child, he attended Catholic schools and served at the altar. He even contemplated a vocation to the priesthood. When he was 34, he went on a retreat to a Benedictine monastery in Snowmass, Colo., to prayerfully consider it. Just before the retreat, however, he met Jennifer, his future wife. He said that all he could think about on the retreat was the girl he had just met. “At that retreat, I realized that I really liked this girl,” he laughed. “I decided on that retreat that my vocation would be my work.” His vocation in helping children was evident in the establishment of Operation Aware. In 1979, at the request of Bishop Beltran, Mr. Conway designed Operation Aware, a program that offers drug, violence and risk preven-tion education to children in the classroom from pre-kindergarten through high school. Operation Aware was initially adopted by all the Catholic schools in Oklahoma, and now serves more than 200,000 children in schools throughout Northeast Oklahoma. “Operation Aware started out of the Church because of my Catholic faith,” said Mr. Conway. His involvement with this program led him to attend graduate school and become a thera-pist. He wanted to help troubled youth. After graduating, he and Jennifer became foster par-ents, opening up their home to boys and girls who were displaced for a variety of reasons. Mr. Conway then began to train foster parents for the state. He and Jennifer still do this training. Eastern Oklahoma Catholic / July/August 2012 / www. dioceseoftulsa .org Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Aug. 15 | St. Stephen of Hungary, Aug. 16 | St. Bernard, abbot
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