Selfless love is often described as a seed. It is the giving of oneself for something bigger in the hopes that one’s selfless spirit will spring forth in another. On Jan. 4, former Saint Louis U. High principal secretary and registrar Helen Klenklen passed away at age 85. Klenklen has surely left her mark on many people, teaching them important lessons about love and sacrifice. While her presence might not be known by current SLUH students, her legacy continues to blossom within the faculty and alumni who were touched by her model of selfless service.

Klenklen loved the U High. Her dedication to this community is distinctly marked by her 50 years tenure. In 1960, she began as the secretary for principal Fr. Jerry Sheehan, S.J. and later worked as the registrar, where she would record grades and prepare transcripts for students.

“She was here 50 years, and I can't remember her ever missing a day of school,” said Assistant Principal for Academics Tom Becvar. “She was always here. No matter what people needed, she was there to help.”

“She was here 50 years, and I can't remember her ever missing a day of school. She was always here. No matter what people needed, she was there to help.”

Assistant Principal for Academics Tom Becvar

Yet, Klenklen’s work description does not fully capture the things that she did for the SLUH community.

In an article published in the Prep News in 2010, when she retired, former art teacher John Mueller said: “The thing about Helen is that she has these jobs that nobody knows they even get done. A lot of that might not be in her job description, but she’s taken it on to get it done.”

Klenklen would often help organize different events for the faculty to participate in. For theology teacher Richard Wehner, the annual event where faculty could bring their kids to campus over the one weekend in December to see Santa Claus was particularly memorable.

“I remember she asked me to be Santa Claus one time. And I said, ‘Helen, I would love to be Santa Claus. But some of my kids are going to be here, and I think they would know that it was me, not Santa Claus.’  She just smiled and said, ‘Okay.’  She was just a good, steady, valiant woman who gave her all to this school.”

Klenklen was, in this sense, very thoughtful, taking the time to offer a welcoming spirit wherever she could, especially for new faculty members.

“I met her when I interviewed for the job. This theater was just being built,” said theater director Kathryn Whitaker. “(My husband and I) are not from St. Louis. So, not only was I in a new job, I was in a new town. She just embraced us from the beginning.”

To many people, she embodies the phrase ‘People for Others.’ 

“She always took care of everybody,” said Becvar. “Way back when I started, there were a lot more (Jesuit) scholastics, and she would always try to make them feel welcome—invite them for dinners and things just to make sure that they had someplace to go.”

For science teacher Tim O’Keefe, Klenklen was a ray of sunshine throughout his career, a relationship that began when he started working at SLUH in 1989.

“I ended up living in Brentwood Forest, and she actually lived around the corner,” said O’Keefe. “She was always really nice, like when she would sometimes bake cookies and bring them over to me or would make a pie or something. Sometimes on a Sunday evening, we'd have dinner. She was very thoughtful that way.”

Klenklen was also a hard worker and instrumental in helping to organize the first Cashbahs when SLUH president Fr. Richard Bailey, S.J created the fundraiser in 1970.

“She was kind of like his right-hand woman,” said Wehner. “She would go with him to look at different auction items and pick them up because he wanted her opinion.”

“Bottom line, I think she has, as one woman, done a job that’s at least a two-person job given the stresses and timeframes that are involved,” said former French teacher Richard Keefe in the Prep News article about her retirement.

Perhaps, though, Klenklen's most stunning feature was her wit and ferocious ability to speak her mind.

“Her voice then and always had a bemused quality: she was always ready to notice whatever was funny and remarkable about the world,” said English teacher Richard Moran. “Another teacher recently told me that when a rather young man came to the school to take an important position, she told him, ‘I have underwear older than you.’ She had that kind of irreverent sense of humor that she somehow joined comfortably with religious piety and a willingness to serve people at soup kitchens.”

SLUH, for Klenklen, became not only a home, but also a family. A single woman, Klenklen never had kids. Still, Klenklen put her nurturing attitude to use, often watching and caring for the children of faculty members.

“As my kids were growing up, she would be involved in some of our birthday parties and things like that,” said Becvar. “She always wanted pictures of our kids for her refrigerator. She was a single person, but she became family for not only me but a lot of other people here. Her refrigerator was always covered with pictures. She wanted to make sure that she was part of people’s lives.”

“Long ago, when I would bring my daughter to school, Ms. Klenklen was always so charming with her,” said Moran. “Forty years later, she greeted my granddaughter with the same cheeriness when we visited, calling her ‘Miss Adorable’ and asking her what she thought about things. It always sounded as if she really wanted to know.”

Klenklen was especially involved with O’Keefe’s family. In fact, she was the first person that O’Keefe trusted to babysit his children.

“She was always looking out for the kids. She'd love them and hold them and give them hugs,” said O’Keefe. “When they were toddlers, she would play with them. She had a little squeaky Gator that she would squeak, and she had candy for them. She just loved them coming in. She was so good to them, and they just loved her.”

But Klenklen was not only in service to SLUH. Volunteering during her time at SLUH and afterwards, Klenklen demonstrated what it meant to be a woman for and with others. Even at her death, she asked that all donations to her funeral go instead to Sts. Peter and Paul Society.

“She was one of the few people that started service here before we had service here,” said Becvar. “She would always be down cooking for the homeless center before that was part of what the students did. After she retired from here, she worked with the Asian immigrant community, and she actually was teaching people who came in as immigrants. She was a person who just gave everything to other people.”

Above all else, Klenklen’s life was marked by love.

“Helen loved everybody and everybody loved her,” said Becvar. “She was such a giving person no matter what mood you're in. She always made you feel better. A lot of people use the word love to describe her, and I think that really testifies to that great heart of her’s.”