Archbishop's web site Denver Catholic Register Parishes Catholic Pastoral Center
March 13, 2002
Injury forces popular nun-teacher to retire to Kentucky
Denver Head Start founder Sister Rosemary Keegan to move to mother house
By Alwen Bledsoe
A cheerful grin bursts across the cheerful Irish face of Sister Rosemary Keegan, S.L., as she meanders through vivid memories of her many years in Denver.
"I've had a wonderful, wonderful life," she said.
The well-loved nun, made famous throughout Denver by a courageous recovery from a near-fatal beating in November 1981, will be returning to the Sisters of Loretto Mother House in Kentucky after a broken leg heals. She is currently recovering at Hallmark Nursing Center in Littleton.
After about 40 years of service in the Archdiocese of Denver, Sister Keegan will be deeply missed, friends said.
"We love Sister Rosemary," said Sister Sharon Ford, R.S.M., secretary for religious. "Losing her spirit here in Colorado is going to be a real loss for us."
Sister Keegan's unadulterated joy and forgiving spirit became famous throughout the archdiocese after she was attacked in 1981 by a burglar. A flurry of newspaper articles followed the attacks and documented the nun's tenacious recovery.
"She is a wonderful witness of joy and forgiveness," Sister Ford said.
William Leon Loggins was found guilty of attempted murder after Sister Keegan interrupted an early-morning burglary in her Denver Head Start office. After attacking Sister Keegan with a hammer, the burglar left her lying in a pool of blood. The brutal beating partially paralyzed the nun and caused some brain damage. But she told reporters afterwards that she had forgiven her assailant, and Sister Keegan still prays for Loggins daily, she said.
Once, the nun said, her friend Cardinal J. Francis Stafford, then archbishop of Denver, asked her to pray for him.
"I said, `Surely, but it'll have to be right after I pray for Willie Loggins,'" she said. "He thought that was mighty Christian of me."
Sister Keegan smiled her characteristically huge smile and belted out her equally characteristic hearty laughter at the memory.
By her own admission she certainly doesn't fit reigning stereotypes of nuns.
"I'm a little bit forward and I don't mean to be funny, but many times I am what I don't expect to be," she explained. "I think I have a way of appealing to a lot of people."
Indeed her circle of acquaintances is flung far and wide. She's met all sorts from TV's Mister Rogers to Mother Teresa and maintains close friendships with priests, bishops and cardinals throughout the world. And, she added, "I think I know every nun in Denver."
In fact, her friends are so many that she sent 450 Christmas cards last year. But some of her most precious relationships are with the children she calls "my kids."
"All told I've taught 1,700 5-year-olds," she said, grinning. "My children are dear to my heart as well as their families," she added later.
Sister Keegan taught in several Denver Catholic schools. In 1965 she was one of several education leaders to work with the Johnson administration to develop Head Start, a child development program for low-income children and their families.
She subsequently brought Head Start to Denver and served as director of several Colorado Head Start programs. Her work has garnered recognition from the National Catholic Education Association and has even earned her a building bearing her name. The Sister Rosemary Keegan Center, once the Teton Head Start Center, was renamed in 1986 to recognize her for 21 years of service to Head Start. Altogether, she worked with Head Start for 28 years before and after the attack, and wrote a doctoral dissertation titled the "History of Head Start in Denver" after the attack.
In a 1987 Register article, then-Archbishop Stafford called her "one of the most knowledgeable people on Denver and Denver's poor."
Sister Peg Maloney, executive assistant to the bishop in the diocese of Colorado Springs, was a student at St. Philomena's throughout Sister Keegan's teaching career there. Half of the nine children in her family were taught by the nun, she said.
"She had a real passion for making sure all children had an opportunity for a good education," she said.
The nun was known as a "fun teacher," and there was never a boring or idle moment in her classroom, she continued.
"She has a tremendous and faithful commitment to the families of the children that she taught," Sister Maloney added.
A self-proclaimed "cheerer-upper," Sister Keegan has spent much of the time since the attack praying for others and spreading the joy and faith for which she is known.
"I know that (God) hears me," she said.
Her faith is well known enough even at Hallmark Nursing Center to warrant a recent request for her to sit with and comfort a dying man in the center. His wife could not be found, and neither could a priest, Sister Keegan said.
"So I had to be `clergy,'" she added. She prayed with him until his wife came, and the next day comforted his wife and daughter. Losing a close family member is one of the hardest things anyone has to go through, she said.
But "life goes on, honey, and it does," she said. "I have great faith."
Her list of prayer requests "grows and grows and grows," she said.
"I pray an awful lot," she said, adding that her prayer list includes 18 AIDS patients the archdiocese ministers to as well as friends and their families and the Register.
"I try to keep people happy," she said.
And her huge throng of friends and admirers makes it clear she's succeeded.
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