Genevieve Fahey [1927-2013]; TPS teacher shared skills for parenting

Volunteer helped organize physical education classes

12/3/2013

Genevieve Fahey, a retired teacher for Toledo Public Schools and volunteer for many years at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church, died Friday in her home in Cincinnati. She was 86.

Her family said she died of natural causes in her sleep.

Mrs. Fahey taught career development skills to young mothers at Macomber-Whitney Vocational Technical High School, said Rosie Abel, one of her four daughters.

The program was designed to provide practical parenting skills and give girls skills to work outside the home, she said.

“She was a mentor and role model for many of the students,” Ms. Abel said.

Mrs. Fahey, who had a degree in home economics from Mundelein College in Chicago, now part of Loyola University, took education courses at the University of Toledo and started teaching at the vocational school in the 1970s. She retired in the late 1980s.

For her work in helping young women, she received the woman of the year award in 1987 from the University of Toledo’s Catharine S. Eberly Center for Women.

The former Genevieve Engel was born Feb. 6, 1927, in Chicago. She graduated in 1944 from St. Scholastica Academy in Chicago.

She married John Fahey on June 30, 1951. Ms. Abel said her parents attended the same elementary school and rekindled their friendship after high school at the wedding of Mr. Fahey’s sister.

Mr. Fahey’s job with Moore Business Forms took the couple to South Bend, Ind., and Niagara Falls, N.Y., and finally, Toledo, in 1957.

They raised their family in West Toledo near Blessed Sacrament, where Mrs. Fahey was a volunteer at the school and the church.

Ms. Abel said her mother helped organize the physical education program at the grade school.

“When we all grew up, my mom helped out a lot at the church,” she said.

She was named mother of the year in 1970 by the church’s Rosary Altar Society.

She also was a volunteer at Hospice of Northwest Ohio in Perrysburg Township and Mothers Against Drunk Drivers.

In 2004, the couple moved to Cincinnati, where their daughter, Rosie, and her family live. Mr. Fahey died on Feb. 25, 2011. Mrs. Fahey also was preceded in death by a daughter, Anne Fahey, who died in 1984.

Surviving are her daughters Mary Hallinan, Kappy Fahey, Genny Boesen, and Rosie Abel; sons Paul and Tom Fahey, and 14 grandchildren.

The funeral Mass will be celebrated at 11 a.m. Friday in Blessed Sacrament Church, where visitation will begin an hour before the service.

The family suggests tributes to Down Syndrome Association of Greater Cincinnati.

— Mark Reiter