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A teacher who opened many minds

She didn’t teach me to read— my mother did that — but Helen Foley taught me that assigned reading could be fun as well as challenging. Fortunately I encountered Helen before I encountered Silas Marner, otherwise I might have sworn off reading for life.

Helen (I didn’t get to call her that until long after I left school, and then only because we were distant cousins) was the kind of teacher who inspired playwrights. And Helen inspired one named Rod Serling, who worshiped her and wove her into some of his works.

There were others whose artistic fires she fed during her 42 years as an English teacher and drama coach: Television comic Richard Deacon, the actor John Conboy, and television producer Harvey Bullock, to name a few. They were the stars, but they were not her sole beneficiaries.

Just about all of us, I’d guess, who passed through her classroom left it a little bit better, if for no other reason than the discovery that learning didn’t have to be painful: that it could, in fact be pleasant.
Helen never married, but she had an extended family that reached far beyond her hometown.

Her summer place in Nicholson, Pa., which she called The Creamery —because that's what it was before she turned it into an antique filled hideaway - became a salon that attracted theater types, academics and even some normal people.

Helen was no Mr. Chips type teacher. Far from it. She had a love of the language that is born into the Irish and she had an lrish temper to go with that gift. And if there was something about which she did not have an informed opinion I don’t know what it was.

You could disagree with her, but if you did you’d better have your argument down pat. Otherwise you’d he in for some heavy weather.

Helen liked to hold court. She wouldn’t admit it, of course, but that is what she did. Whether it was lunch at Edigans or the annual Binghamton High School Distinguished Graduates dinner, she drew crowds. Icon has become an overworked word of late. We use it to describe movie actors whose flame has flickered for more than 15 minutes, but Helen fit the description by any measure.

In 1986, after Binghamton High School was renovated, the auditorium became the Helen Foley Theater, and a decade later her name was added to the luminaries in downtown Binghamton’s Walk of Stars.

Helen died on Friday after a brief illness that probably didn’t seem brief. She leaves a sister, Norma, a nephew, Michael Butler and enough admirers to fill a phone hook. During one of our get togethers last year I mentioned coming across a wire story that the Catholic Church had banned the singing of her favorite song, Danny Boy, at church funerals because it is not a religious song. Helen did not take the news lightly.
On Jan. 17, 2003 starting at 10a.m., there will be a memorial service for Helen at St. Patrick’s Church in Binghamton. Unless that grand old building has an earthquake-proof foundation, I’d suggest they waive the rule on Danny Boy.

Rossie is associate editor of the Press & Sun-Bulletin. His column appears on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Write to him c/o P.O. Box 1270, Binghamton, N. Y. 13902-1270.