<strong>Who:</strong> Alice Conner, 80, of Kansas City, Kan.</p><p><strong>When and how she died: </strong>Sept. 22, of an aortic aneurysm.</p><p><strong>Always serving: </strong>When her children remember Alice Conner, they think of a gentle woman with a great sense of humor who was happiest serving others.</p><p>She was 22 when she and R.J. Conner welcomed their first child and 42 when they had their last, and she gave her time to the schools and organizations the children joined, oldest daughter Diane Kovich said.</p><p>&ldquo;She was always volunteering her time,&rdquo; Kovich said. &ldquo;It gave us a good example of doing the same thing, but it was more what you saw than what she said to you.&rdquo;</p><p>For the last 40 years, Conner worked as the parish secretary for Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Kansas City, Kan. She made sure everything ran smoothly, neighbor and fellow parishioner Mark Schieber said. Few realized how much she did, he said, until she died.</p><p>Indeed, only at his mother&rsquo;s funeral did David Conner learn that Alice Conner attended every funeral Mass there for the last 40 years. She felt that someone should represent the parish and the school and help if the family needed anything, David Conner said.</p><p>In 1979, Alice Conner became the parish&rsquo;s coordinator for its monthly day of service to St. Mary&rsquo;s Food Kitchen, which serves the needy in Kansas City, Kan. She spent hours finding volunteers and cooking food to serve 500. Many churches participate but eventually drop out. Under Conner&rsquo;s direction, Sacred Heart has stayed involved since the start, son Doug Conner said.</p><p>At one point, someone nominated Alice Conner to sit in the Buck O&rsquo;Neil seat at Kauffman Stadium, but she shunned the honor, Doug Conner said. She said she didn&rsquo;t want to call attention to herself.</p><p><strong>Raising five kids, 10 priests: </strong>Alice and R.J. Conner raised five children in their Kansas City, Kan., house, which R.J., a carpenter, built. For a while, they lived in the garage while they finished the residence.</p><p>She was a fun mom who took in stride the craziness of kids, her children said. She always threw the family&rsquo;s Christmas Eve celebration. One year, she got a head start by baking dozens of cookies in early November and stashing them in her basement freezer. That was a tad early to start, with so many kids and grandkids around, David Conner said. By Christmas Eve, when she sent someone downstairs to bring up the cookies, only five empty containers remained. She laughed it off and never baked that far ahead again.</p><p>In 1969, she took a part-time job as secretary at Sacred Heart Parish. It was part time on paper, but the job of a church secretary never is done, her children said. They spent much of their growing-up years helping around the church, Doug Conner said.</p><p>Over the years, priests came and went. But Alice Conner was a constant. Her children joked that the chain of command at church was the pope, the bishop, Mom and the priest, Doug Conner said. </p><p>She had a wealth of knowledge to share with a new priest, said Rev. Michael Hermes, a former pastor of Sacred Heart. </p><p>&ldquo;Some people are really good at what they do,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;She was great.&rdquo; </p><p><strong>Never stopped working: </strong>The day she died, Alice Conner typed up the church bulletin, Kovich said. She never slowed down, even after discovering three years ago that she had an aortic aneurysm, which eventually took her life. She actually had joked at a huge birthday party the weekend before that there was only one way to escape food kitchen duty. &ldquo;She said the only way you can get out of that food kitchen is you gotta die,&rdquo; Doug Conner said.</p><p><strong>Survivors include: </strong>Her husband of nearly 60 years, five children, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.</p><p><strong>The last word: </strong>Alice Conner was wonderfully welcoming, and strangers weren&rsquo;t strangers for long, David Conner said. </p><p>&ldquo;My mother was the type that if you were her friend, you were her family,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We had a lot of Christmas dinners where I thought, &lsquo;Who are all these people?&rsquo;&ensp;&rdquo;