Helen attended and graduated from Shelby High School and the Women’s College at the University of North Carolina. While working in Greensboro she met and married Jess F. DeLois with whom she shared her life until his death in 1987. Together they raised six children, first in Charleston, Maine, then in Caribou and Brunswick, where she remained until moving to The Veterans’ Home in 2008.
Helen was a remarkable woman who devoted her life to her husband, her children, her church and her community. Although she worked many years for the Brunswick School System where she developed and ran the first AV department (as it was then called), her real life was in service to others. She was a caregiver by nature, first in Caribou where she took in children of working mothers and later in Brunswick where she saw to the needs of the elderly, friends and the disenfranchised. She volunteered countless hours at the Brunswick Soup Kitchen and Saint Charles Church.
Known for her hospitality and cooking skills, her greatest joy was gathering her family, her friends and assorted others around her dining room table and providing them with memorable meals, fun and laughter. An invitation to share a meal with Helen was much sought after, but one which she gave generously and often.
She is predeceased by her husband: Jess; her parents; her sisters: Vangie, Thelma and Kate; her brothers: Charles, Joe, Hugh and Peter. Her great friend Jack Caldwell.
She is survived by her sisters: Louise Mauney Campbell and Ann Mauney Williams; brother James Mauney and wife Frances; daughters: Mary and her husband Robert Raff of Portland; Jane and her husband Robert Strauss of Waterford and their children: Jesse Strauss and his wife Christina; Hannah Strauss; and Rachel Strauss; her sons: David of Brunswick and his daughter Emily, her partner Guy Streitburger, son Guy III and Emily’s mother Susan DeLois; John of Waterford; Joseph and Rebecca (Abelon) of Falmouth and their children: Nathan, and his wife Melissa; Anthony, his wife Elizabeth and son Asher; and Jacob DeLois ; Thomas and Lisa Pardus of Pownal and their children Cooper and Wyatt. As well as many nieces and nephews.
The family is very grateful for the care that Helen received from the staff at the Veterans’ Home, especially for the love and devotion of April Noyes to whom the family will be eternally indebted.
Friends and family may call at Bracket Funeral Home at 29 Federal St. in Brunswick, Maine, on Monday, Jan. 18 from 4 to 6 p.m. Funeral services with be held at 1 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 19 at St. Charles Borromeo Church, 132 McKeen St., Brunswick.
In lieu of flowers, please make a donation to the Brunswick Student Aid Fund: BASAF, P.O. Box 867, Brunswick, ME 04011.
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