Helen L. Klein

Eulogy – Helen Lee Klein

Helen Klein was born on Long Island, New York on July 26, 1914. The only child of Fred and Mabel Lee, she spent her childhood and teen years in Brooklyn, New York. She lived in a middle-class area of Brooklyn experiencing a happy childhood with friends and school activities. She enjoyed dancing and horseback riding. A lifetime lover of cats, she was especially fond of her childhood cat, Mitsie. She was a teenager when the Market crashed and the Great Depression began. She graduated from Erasmus High School in Brooklyn in 1932.

She met a young man named Philip on a ferry and developed a friendship over a number of years. They were married in November of 1939. They honeymooned in Valeria, New York.

Helen worked as a secretary in New York City during World War II. After 15 years of marriage, she gave birth to her only son Douglas. Philip and Helen moved to the Red Bank area of the Jersey shore and prepared for a new life. Her parents followed Philip and Helen to the Shore, in 1954.

Philip and Helen became members of the First Presbyterian Church of Red Bank, New Jersey (Tower Hill Church) where Helen was a member for over 60 years. She was faithfully involved in her church, participating in numerous bible studies as well as volunteering as a receptionist for many years. Helen accompanied the church choir on a tour of England and Scotland in 1986.

Her remains will be scattered in The Memorial Garden of the Red Bank Church. It was a place of great significance as the place where the family came to faith in Christ. Helen brought Bible reading and prayer into the life of her son who after a period of rebellion, came to know Christ as Savior in May 1970. Helen heard Doug preach as a teenager during Youth Sunday services and over the years became a regular listener to his sermons.

Helen loved traveling and had the privilege of being a passenger on the Queen Elizabeth II. She also visited the Grand Canyon with her granddaughter Jennifer in the mid 1990s. Her grandchildren, Jennifer, Paul, and Jonathan, along with her six-year old great granddaughter Madison, held a special place in her heart as she constantly tried to keep connected with their ever changing lives. She cherished visits from her family.

Helen was a resident of the Atrium of Navesink Harbor in Red Bank from 2002 until she moved to Colorado in the summer of 2011. She spent the final months of her life in a residential senior care facility in Aurora, Colorado. She faced the difficulties of aging with grace and courage, relishing peaceful moments with her family in the quiet gardens outside her Senior Care home. The visits most often ended with a prayer for comfort and grace and a thanksgiving for the hope of life in heaven with Christ. She entered her eternal home on February 12, 2013. She is now home with Christ and will never need her wheelchair again. For her, death is past, and life has begun.


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