BY JORDAN FRIAS
SPECIAL TO THE BIR
After 64 years of service to the St. Brigid’s Parish neighborhood in South Boston, Sister Evelyn Hurley will say goodby to the community on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, her 99th birthday, and retire to the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth’s motherhouse in Kentucky where she began her journey into convent life 82 years ago.

During those eight decades, Sr. Evelyn served and taught for some 20 years at the order’s missions in Mississippi and Kentucky before being assigned for medical reasons to her home town, and St. Brigid’s School, where was a classroom fixture for 45 years. She also taught at the old Nazareth School, which is now South Boston Catholic Academy, before her retirement in 1995. Of that long stretch, she noted, “When you were assigned to a place, you didn’t know if you would be there for 10, 20 years.”
Sr. Evelyn is the last nun from the community of Sisters of Charity of Nazareth in South Boston that first set up shop in a convent on M Street and East Broadway 102 years ago. Asked why she is retiring now, she said, “It is the right time. There’s a time for everything,” she said. “Although I have great health, thank God, at age 99, a lot of people that age don’t have the health I have.”
The oldest of four girls, Evelyn was born in South Boston, but moved around with her family during her childhood, living in Quincy and Roxbury, among other places. After entering the convent at age 17, completing the order’s religious and educational requirements, and receiving her habit, she took the name Sister Alice William (the first names of her mother and father) before she left for her assignment in the missions in the South.
Her father, William, who was popularly known as Bill Hurley during his 20 years in office as a Boston City Councillor, later opened a restaurant in the neighborhood, Billy Hurley’s Log Cabin.
Sr. Evelyn said she decided to go back to her baptismal name in the 1960’s. “I asked my parents and they said I should change it since you use your legal name for voting and things like that. It’s easier really,” she said.
She and her youngest sister, Carol Chemlen of Bedford, Massachusetts, are the only surviving members of their original family. Sr. Evelyn said her sister regrets that she will be leaving South Boston after retirement, but understands why she is doing it. “She wants what’s best for me.” “We talk a lot and see each other quite often.”
In retirement, Sr. Evelyn plans to keep herself busy. “Whatever little job I can do, I will do it,” she said. There will be “a lot of time for prayer” and crocheting while she is at the Congregation.
What she’s going to miss most about South Boston are its people. She said she sees a lot of her former students or “pupils” at church gatherings, functions, and funerals. “When I see them or hear their names, I can still picture how they looked at their first grade desk.” adding, “In the beginning, just being with the children … to me it was a real joy.”
A dinner reception in honor of Sister Evelyn will be held March 8 at South Boston Catholic Academy after a Mass of Thanksgiving.