Helen McClure Berry Bluhm

Helen McClure Berry Bluhm, age 96, of Peterborough, New Hampshire, died August 21, 2011. She was born December 16, 1914, in New York City, the daughter of the late Gordon Lockwood Berry and Katharine Dwight Berry. She spent her childhood in both New York and Geneva, Switzerland, and attended school at La Marjolaine in Geneva. She graduated from Horace Mann School in New York City and in 1936 from Oberlin College where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. After a year of post graduate study at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and another teaching school in Portland, Oregon, she married Heinz Bluhm in 1938 and they settled in New Haven, Connecticut. Heinz was a professor in the German Department at Yale University and Helen became busy with their growing family. She also began spending summers with her immediate and greater family at an old farm, owned by her aunt, Marion E. Dwight, in Wilton, New Hampshire. She enjoyed travel too, first camping in the U.S. with her children and later going on many Elderhostel and worldwide trips in her senior years. She always loved “exercising her mind” and took numerous courses in German, Spanish, and photography. Her interest in photography began with family movies, then prints and slides. In her classes she studied not only composition and artistic elements, but also darkroom techniques, cropping, printing and enhancing old photos. The latter proved invaluable for her decades-long project creating family history albums from photos dating back to the 1880s and annotated with quotes from her mother’s diary. She entered photography competitions and was a Wilton Old Home Days winner with her pictures of the neighboring Frye farm. Her winning photos were displayed in an exhibit at the Wilton Town Hall in August 1981. In New Haven she was an active member of the United Church on the Green, played in the handbell choir, participated for more than 10 years with Interfaith Volunteer Caregivers, and made lifelong friends. Most of all Helen was devoted to family. She never missed a greater family Thanksgiving, Christmas, or other get-together over the years, and loved celebrations with her own family. The beautiful old farm and summer place in Wilton, which she acquired in 1966, was a constant delight—especially as the site of annual and countless visits, reunions, and special occasions with family, friends and neighbors, and a wedding, too. Gardening and major restoration projects for the 1763 house and property were also great sources of pleasure and accomplishment. In 2004 Helen moved from New Haven to the RiverMead Retirement Community in Peterborough, New Hampshire, where she enjoyed new and old friends and, being so close to Wilton, continuing and frequent visits there for family gatherings. Helen is survived by her children, Peter Dwight Bluhm and his wife Susan, Louise Bluhm Jeanne and her husband Robert, Margaret Bluhm Carey and her husband Tobe, and Christopher Thorne Bluhm and his significant other Stacey Peterson; seven grandchildren, Elizabeth Carhart Bluhm, Thomas Lucien Jeanne, James McClure Jeanne, Lila Carey Mortimer and husband David, Joseph Plotkin Carey and wife Lauren Fajardo, Katharine Anne Bluhm, and David Christopher Bluhm; and her great grandchild Maxwell Lester Mortimer. She was preceded in death by her parents, her husband Heinz Siegfried Bluhm, her grandchild Samuel Wolcott Carey, her brother Loren Curtis Berry, and her sisters Louise Berry Caldwell and Marion Berry Scott. The family wishes to specially thank the RiverMead Retirement Community and its Special Care nurses and staff for their compassionate care during Helen’s last years.

Memorial contributions may be made to the Wilton Public and Gregg Free Library, PO Box 420, Wilton, NH 03086.

A private graveside memorial service will be held at a later date at the Oak Hill Cemetery in Southington, Connecticut.