She made every grandchild feel like the favorite.

Her life

Helen Margaret Brennan, of Erie, Pennsylvania, was born in Buffalo in 1947, the older of two O’Hare girls. She graduated from Mercyhurst College in 1969 and taught fourth grade at Lincoln Elementary for thirty-eight years. Generations of Erie children learned to love reading in her classroom. She married Thomas Brennan in 1971. They raised three children, Sarah, Michael, and Kathleen, and welcomed four grandchildren who knew her as Nana. Her gardens were the best on the block. Her cardinals were on time every morning. Her butter cookies could end any argument.

A short eulogy

The first thing my mother ever taught me was the name of a bird. I was four. We were at the kitchen window. She lifted me up and pointed and said, that one is a cardinal. The boy ones are red. The girl ones are the color of toast. She said it like a secret. That was Mom. Always pointing. Always pulling you close to show you something.

She loved her fourth graders. She remembered their names twenty years later, when they came back to visit. A boy came up to her at the grocery store, years after he had been in her class. He was a grown man with a baby on his hip. He just said, Mrs. Brennan. And she said his name back, and his friend’s name, and where they used to sit. She walked out to the car and cried. She would say it was the onions.

I loved you. I love you. Thank you for the cardinals.

Stories

From Michael Brennan, son: Mom kept every report card. Mine, Sarah’s, Kathleen’s. Every one. I found them last week. A shoebox in her closet. Labeled by year. Her handwriting. I asked her once why she kept them. She said you never know.

From Eliza Cole, granddaughter: nana taught me to bake by feel. she said a recipe is a suggestion and your hands will tell you the truth. i made her butter cookies on tuesday. it was the only thing i could think to do.

From Maria Esposito, neighbor: Twenty-two Augusts of tomatoes. She would walk over with a brown paper bag and a note inside. The note always said the same three words. For the gravy. I have a tin in my pantry with all the notes. I am not throwing it away.

From Father Daniel Reilly, pastor: Helen sat in the same pew for forty years. Third from the back, on the aisle. She stayed after every Mass to put the hymnals back. She did not do it to be seen. She did it because the books had been left open, and Helen could not abide a book left open.