Helene Cummins, 92, of Newton; Ohio native
Helene (Goodman) Cummins of Newton and formerly of Columbus, Ohio, a retired saleswoman and a homemaker, died peacefully Friday morning at a hospice in Wayland. She was 92.
Born and raised in Columbus, Mrs. Cummins graduated from Columbus School for Girls and attended Lake Erie College in Painesville, Ohio, for a year before getting married. Her father, Leon Goodman Sr., was a successful entrepreneur and president of his reformed temple. Her mother, Helen, a local beauty, died at 39 after nursing her son Leon Jr. through a near-fatal bout of pneumonia.
Mrs. Cummins was a gifted athlete, excelling at swimming, golf and tennis. She married a local businessman, Herbert Cummins, and they had four children.
She was an avid art lover who filled her home with paintings of all kinds, which eventually inspired her youngest daughter, Lisa Kamieniecki, of Steamboat Springs, Colo., to become a successful artist.
Mrs. Cummins was also passionate about social justice, which inspired another daughter, Jacqueline Ducharme of Wayland, to become a social worker and eventually the COO of the state’s largest psychiatric hospital.
Theirs was a chaotic household, overrun by kids and their family pets, especially their Bassett Hound Happy, the first of several Bassetts named Happy in several of her children’s eventual homes.
After her divorce, Mrs. Cummins moved to a smaller apartment with her cat, and befriended and fed the local wildlife — including a feral cat her son John of Steamboat Springs later adopted.
Her daughter Helen Strahinich of Jamaica Plain describes her mother at that time as a latter-day Dr. Dolittle. “One day she heard a knocking at her door. A pack of raccoons were looking for her,” Ms. Strahinich recalled. “One of the raccoons had a baked-bean can stuck over its head. Our mother led a raccoon parade to a nearby veterinarian. Problem solved.”
During that time Mrs. Cummins went to work as a saleswoman in her family’s furniture store, where she became a top seller. She later worked for another store and eventually retired in 1989. She took up competitive bridge and traveled across the country and around the world to tournaments.
About 13 years ago, she moved to Cabot Park Village in Newton. At birthday parties and Passover Seders, Mrs. Cummins regaled her children and six grandchildren with family lore. One of her favorites was the tale of an eccentric family friend who, upon his release from prison, dressed up in a striped shirt and pants threw himself a jailbird party.
At one family Seder, she absentmindedly contributed a ham — a Jewish faux pas her daughters never let her forget.
Afflicted with dementia two years ago, Mrs. Cummins moved to the Royal Wayland nursing home, where she received the compassionate attention of its staff along with a hospice care in her final months.
She leaves her grandchildren, Zachary and Benjamin Ducharme, Nichola Strahinich and Vanessa Aponte, and Luke and Jesse Kamieniecki, as well as her two great-grandsons, Phoenix and Orion Aponte.
Funeral services will be private. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Alzheimer’s Association, 309 Waverley Oaks Road, Waltham, MA, 02452.