Helen ‘Ma” Sunday was a powerful force in Billy Sunday’s camapigns.

MA SUNDAY’S POWER SEEN IN CAMPAIGN

Her Judgment Determines Many Policies and Helps Evangelist in Work to Save Souls.

TAKES ACTIVE INTEREST

The balance wheel of the Sunday party, they call her.

Born of sturdy Scotch stock, Mrs. William A. Sunday uses all of the solidity and far-seeing qualities of her ancestry in matching the impetuous, quick action of Billy Sunday, and keeping the whole Sunday organization running in perfect trim.

As devoted to her husband as he is to her, she has been with him on most of his travels, and within between revivals and conferences the care of a family of four, and a home at Winona Lake.

‘Nell’s not much on looks,’ Sunday has told his Richmond audience, ‘but she has more horse sense than any other woman that I have ever seen, and every time I go against her judgment I get in bad.’

Energetic Personality

But Sunday’s own picture of her lacks one of her most forceful characteristics, her physical energy.

To follow a man of Sunday’s vitality on a revival campaign, and at the same time to rear four children, and care for a home requires more than ordinary physical endurance. But on top of it all Mrs. Sunday has continued to keep pace that has been set, and now not only takes care of the home at Winona Lake but is a general as the landscape gardener for their home town.

At the present time she is devoting her time to beautifying Winona Lake and keeping the home there in readiness for the week or two that Sunday pays there.

Knows How to Work

When Mrs. Sunday starts out on anything, she usually accomplished it. She has been known to work in the garden, and then go on a long trip herself. She has even been known to work in the garden when no one else could be found to do it.

Work in the garden is one of the diversions of Mrs. Sunday, and she often have found her hard at it, working among the flowers and shrubs that have fallen to her lot, but in the days when Mr. Sunday was a struggling evangelist barely making enough from town to town to pay the expenses of reaching the next place, Mrs. Sunday did all the work at home, cared for the children, and part of the time traveled with him, keeping the children in school at what ever place they were for the time.

The story of the courtship of Billy Sunday and Helen A. Thompson has been told many times, but it never loses its interest.

The two met just after Sunday’s conversion at the prayer meeting of the Jefferson Park Presbyterian church. ‘Nell is a Presbyterian, that is why I am one,’ Sunday said one night at the tabernacle.

Father Objected

Objections to a professional ball player on the part of the elder Thompson for a time made meetings between them difficult, but Mr. Thompson has said that since Sunday’s route to the ball park lay past his house, that Helen wore all the paint off the front porch by sweeping it while he passed.

While Sunday was with the Philadelphia team, Helen married him, and the honeymoon traveling was with the team.

Mrs. Sunday’s father was William Thompson, one of the pioneer manufacturers of Chicago, and was a soldier in the Civil war like Sunday’s father also.

Both of her parents were full Scotch, and she herself was born at Dundee, Illinois.

Cited in: Palladium-Item. Tue, May 09, 1922 ·Page 1