Helen C. Heller

Born on Cherry Valley Road in Delaware Water Gap to the late Thomas and Myrtle Carson in 1915, she attended the Dutot School. While a young girl, she worked at several Delaware Water Gap resort hotels and helped with the family bathing beach and amusement park known as Island Park on a family owned island in the Delaware River, where she and her sister would row patrons to the island from the New Jersey shore. She graduated from Stroudsburg High School in 1933. She obtained her teaching degree from East Stroudburg "Normal School" (now East Stroudsburg University.) She taught for a year as one of three teachers for eight grades. She married her high school sweetheart, John Heller of Shawnee-on-Delaware in 1937. They lived in Shawnee until 1963 when they moved into the house on Oak Street in Delaware Water Gap. There she became an avid gardner until moving to Pleasant Valley Manor in March 2008, where she spent her last years, with good friends Katie and Helen, under the tender care of the Pleasant Valley Manor staff.

She worked for 20 years for the JCPenney Company in Stroudsburg. She was a Brownie Scout leader and a cub scout den mother. She taught Sunday school and bible school at both Shawnee and Delaware Water Gap Presbyterian churches. She was a long time member of the Church of the Mountain in Delaware Water Gap, to which she donated the church carillon in memory of her husband. She was a volunteer docent at the Antoine Dutot School and Museum in Delaware Water Gap.

In 2004, she was selected by the Delaware Water Gap Chamber of Commerce as its 2004 Citizen of the Year and honored with a dinner at the Delaware Water Gap Country Club, where she was cited for her "outstanding contributions in enhancing the community's quality of life." Also in 2004 she was cited by the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and presented its Good Citizenship Award.

She was predeceased by an infant son, James, in 1946, and by her husband of 56 years in 1993.

She is survived and forever beloved by one sister, Lillian "Tibby" Carlton of Stroudsburg and a son, Michael Heller and his wife Angie of Marlboro, NY, along with two granddaughters, Jennifer Shaw of Blooming NY, and Laura Little of Chaplehill, NY, and their husbands. She was also blessed with five great grandchildren, Jonathan and Kailynn Shaw and Caden, Braxton and Emmy Little.

Interment in the Shawnee Cemetery will be for family members. Reverend William Schram and Reverend Nickels will officiate at a memorial service that will be held at the Delaware Water Gap Church of the Mountain, Main St. and Church Lane at 2 PM on Saturday, May 11.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to The Church of the Mountain, PO Box 336, Delaware Water Gap, PA 18327.

Arrangements have been entrusted to the Lanterman & Allen Funeral Home Inc., 27 Washington St. East Stroudsburg, PA; where online condolences can be made at www.lantermanallenfh.com.