Waterford — Generations of Catholics have learned the Bible from Sister Mary Michelle Sokol.

She starts her lessons in first grade, with a simple question: “Who is Christ?”

From there the questions get more complex, but Sister Michelle, who will retire this month, says a religious education is as simple as following a lesson plan.

“I tell the kids if they keep their book every year, they have everything you need to know about your faith,” she said Sunday after a special Mass in her honor at Our Lady of Perpetual Help church in Quaker Hill, where she will retire this month after 37 years.

For two generations of families at Our Lady of Perpetual Help — and in some cases, three — Sister Michelle has been at the front of the classroom, at the back of the altar preparing for Mass and in the middle of almost everything that happens in the church.

“No matter what, she always tried to help us and reach out to us,” said Amanda Partridge, who grew up in Quaker Hill. Partridge attended Sister Michelle’s lessons as a child and later sent her children to the little brick building behind the church for their own religious education.

And as advanced as the lessons get, her answers to her students’ questions have stayed simple.

“Why am I a nun?” Sister Michelle said on Sunday after sharing a meal. “That’s always one of them. Why did you become a nun?”

“Well, because it’s something God wanted me to do."

The whole story behind how Sister Michelle became a nun — and stayed one long enough to be perhaps one of the last working nuns in southeastern Connecticut — is as simple as that.

She grew up in Meriden, one of five siblings. An aunt and cousin on her father’s side had already joined a convent. Sister Michelle’s older sister was also on a path to become a nun, she said, “but then she met a guy.” At the age of 14, Sister Michelle just decided that the church was going to be her home. It’s something God wanted her to do.

“When I came home to tell my parents I was joining the convent, they said, ‘What?'” she remembered. “I was a tomboy. I love baseball and fishing.”

But something about the sisterhood "seemed to appeal," she said. She never looked back. After 14 years teaching in Michigan, she came back home to Connecticut and joined her aunt, Sister Mary Concepta, at Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

Any surprises along the way?

“No.”

Any second thoughts?

“No.”

She’s one of a diminishing number of nuns in the United States, as the church struggles to attract younger women to join the sisterhood. The number of nuns in the United States fell from about 180,000 in 1965 to about 50,000 in 2014, a study by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University found.

Sister Michelle has a theory why that is.

“Parents don’t take their kids to church ever,” she said. “The church is empty with kids.”

The congregation at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Sunday was largely gray-haired, only a handful of children fidgeting in the pews. The church, commissioned in 1915 by Polish immigrants in New London, moved to Quaker Hill in the 1970s in response to the planned expansion of Interstate 95.

Sitting at the head of the lunch table after Sunday’s mass, Sister Michelle could barely get through a fishing story or a piece of cake without a parent kneeling by her side to thank her for her lessons.

“She was the nice easy nun,” said Nathan Booth, who took Catechism classes with Sister Michelle while her aunt was also teaching. Booth said he now sees Sister Michelle as a key piece of his and his children's religious education.

“You’re trying to build kids that grow up to be good,” he said. “You start at the foundation, and she was one of the helpers that built that foundations for kids to build their lives on.”

At the end of June, Sister Michelle will move in with her younger sister Carol, back in their hometown in Meriden. When she decided to retire this year for health reasons, the Rev. Robert Buonogirno asked her for a list of things that she has taken responsibility for over the years. In addition to teaching, Sister Michelle changed the altar cloths, helped bake the babka bread, cleaned up after Mass and made sure the flowers were just right for every occasion.

Buonogirno said Sunday he realized that the list she gave him was not nearly complete, and that the church would have to enlist an army of volunteers to do all the things Sister Michelle has done.

“It’s only been recently that we have really begun to realize how much she had done,” said Judy Strutt, a member the church and the parish council.

“She always did everything in the background where you didn’t really notice her. She didn’t want to be noticed — she just wanted to do, do, do. For for the church,” Strutt said.

Her legacy will live on in all those ways, and also in her aunt’s babka recipe. The church’s Lady’s Guild bakes hundreds of loaves of the bread each October to raise money for the church, and Sister Michelle taught them all how to do it.

There’s nothing special about the bread, Sister Michelle said Sunday. No secret ingredient, no special technique.

“Just follow the recipe,” she said.

m.shanahan@theday.com