Last weekend the Central Steuben Chamber of Commerce gave its annual Community Spirit award to Helen Kelly Brink. I’ve know Helen for quite a while, but I’ve been working with her two days a week for the past six and a-half years. We use desks right next to each other, though I will confess that a year or so back, Helen rearranged the office so that a four-drawer file cabinet blocked both my desk AND me. I don’t think there was any message or agenda in that, and I have to say that it was actually kind of peaceful back there. But in the end we agreed that it really wasn’t the best arrangement.
And that’s good, because even though I enjoy my work at the historical society every day, working with Helen definitely makes the day extra bright. Besides volunteering twice a week at Magee House, Helen has served multiple terms on the board, including several terms as president.
Helen has fans literally worldwide, thanks to her role on the Steuben County Tiffany Trail, giving tours at the First Presbyterian Church in Bath. You can get the tour yourself on a drop-in basis, Wednesdays during the summer. If you haven’t done so yet, I definitely recommend it.
Four times a year, Helen edits and lays out our quarterly magazine, the Steuben Echoes. She has just finished expanding and Joe Paddock’s History of Steuben County Historical Society, and bringing up to the current date.
IN ADDITION to that, she has written nine books and four pamphlets. I couldn’t get copies of two of them, but the others add up to some 3000 pages of print. Her publications are…
*I Thought It My Duty to Go the My Country’s Call: The Civil War Letters of John McIntosh Kelly & Maryett Babcock Kelly
*A Driving Tour to Historic Places & Areas of Interest Around the Village of Bath
*A Walking Tour Through Bath’s Downtown Historic District
*A Driving Tour to Mossy Bank and Lookout Including Historic Places & Areas of Interest
*A Driving Tour to the Veterans’ Administration Medical Center at Bath
*From the Pages of Our Church’s History: the First Presbyterian Church of Bath
*Our Miss Hille
*The Classons-Claysons of Cohocton, N.Y.
*The Saratoga, Schenectady, & Steuben County Descendants of John Calkins, Jr.
*Some of the Descendants of Asa Phillips
*The Jonathan Oxx Family of Steuben County
*The Descendants of William McClary
…and, maybe most notably, Steuben County Cemeteries: Good, Bad, and Gone! For this project, she and her little dog Cricket spent four summers driving 4000 miles within Steuben County, visiting virtually every one of 400 or so cemeteries. I think there were fewer than half a dozen that she didn’t get to, just because they were in inaccessible terrain. Bill Moore crawled into one spot for her to verify the cemetery’s existence, and in another case a state trooper stopped her as she was about to climb a steep hill, and went up to the top in her place.
AND… once the book was published, and more information started coming in, she brought out a revised, expanded, and updated edition. Helen was well established as “the cemetery lady.”
And as the Cemetery Lady she plans, maps, organizes, and leads the annual Columbus Day Leaf-Peeping Cemetery Tour. Some might find it hard to believe, but this event is wait-listed every year. It’s often suggested that we put on a second bus, but we’ve always pointed out that the best part of the tour is the stories that Helen tells ON the bus, traveling from cemetery to cemetery, and as we point out, we can’t duplicate Helen. Or in other words — nobody can match Helen Kelly Brink.