Helen Braun

Helen Elizabeth Herrscher Braun, 96, died at home in East Chatham, NY, on Sunday, June 21, surrounded by her family. Helen was born in Tela, Honduras, to missionary parents Martha (Fiedler) and Walter Herrscher. She grew up bilingual in the village of Pinalejo and enjoyed the lush life in the tropics, including macaws and monkeys as pets. At the age of 11, she was sent to boarding school in the United States but still felt the love of her parents. She often told the story of her mother’s remarkable trip overland from Honduras to Pennsylvania to see her and sister Joanne during World War II.

Helen attended Elmhurst University and became a registered nurse. While at Elmhurst, she met her future husband, Eugene (“Gene”) Braun, and was immediately taken by his gorgeous blue eyes.

After their marriage in 1953, Helen and Gene joined the United Andean Indian Mission, which first sent them to Costa Rica for Spanish-language acquisition. As Helen already spoke Spanish, she had the foresight to seek out a rural doctor who allowed her to accompany him so she could further develop her practical nursing skills. These came in handy when she and Gene arrived in 1955 at their destination, a mission-owned hacienda named Picalquí in rural Ecuador.

There, Helen managed a small clinic and traveled extensively to provide healthcare services in rural areas rarely reached by doctors. She recounted responding as best she could to all manner of injuries and illnesses and assisting with childbirths in contexts nothing like the US hospital where she had trained. Meanwhile, Gene focused on improvement of agricultural practices in the volcanic ash soil of the high Andes, where, he claimed, the local native population taught him more than he taught them. During that time their first two children, Andrea and Jens were born. A third child, Lucas, died at birth.

In 1962, Helen and Gene moved to the Quito area where they continued mission-related work until 1966, when they officially left the mission because, as expressed in that year’s Christmas letter, “Old missionary methods are no longer speaking clearly to today’s world and new methods must be found.” Eric was born that year and Helen took a position as a nurse at the US Embassy in Quito, while Gene was hired by USAID to support indigenous groups during Ecuador’s agrarian reform period.

As the children grew older, Helen worked primarily as a nurse and did translation on the side, while she also served her local community in various ways, including as a board member of Eric’s parent-run school. This was a time of expansion in her life, with rising awareness of the transformative "women's liberation" movement. Her children remember the regular issues of Ms. magazines arriving from the US and her participation in local women's groups, along with many conversations on these topics.

In 1974, Helen began a long stint as a nurse to Peace Corps Volunteers throughout the country. She loved the work, supporting, healing, and often just listening to the young American volunteers and counseling them. Many of these young people stayed in touch with Helen long after their Peace Corps years in Ecuador, becoming close friends who appreciated her wisdom, healing touch, and deep listening abilities.

Helen had a knack for drawing out what was really on someone’s heart, and would regularly invite a new acquaintance home for supper, provide hospitality, and help them recognize the paths they could next take. This included an uncanny ability of hers to introduce young people to the person they would later marry; quite a few married couples cite Helen Braun as their “matchmaker.”

Helen and Gene built a beautiful and artistic house in the neighborhood of Carcelén which served as home base not only for their children after they completed high school and left for North American colleges, but also, almost weekly, for many friends and visitors with whom they invariably engaged in meaningful and interesting conversations.

Soon after graduating from college, Andrea died of an anaphylactic reaction to a wasp sting, her death leaving a deep, deep sorrow and weight in Helen’s and the family’s life. Not only was Andrea special in her own right, she also shared her mother’s gifts of listening, of being able to ask the right questions of others’ lives such that strangers would freely talk to her, and of feeling confident and comfortable in almost any situation.

As individuals often sought out Helen for advice and informal counseling, she intuitively came to understand the need to focus on helping entire families work together if any change was to happen in people’s patterns and behaviors that would lead to healthier relationships. She recounted that at a workshop on marriage enrichment, she “heard the Call” to work with families. She shifted her focus away from nursing and became instrumental in establishing Ecuador’s first university program in family systems therapy. To teach in that program, she herself earned a Master’s degree in her 60s. She also became instrumental in establishing Ecuador’s first center dedicated to the family systems counseling approach. To this day the Centro Integral de la Familia (CIF) provides these valuable services in many parts of the country.

Through most of their years living in Quito, Helen and Gene attended the Advent-St. Nicholas Lutheran Church (ASN) where they developed good and long-lasting friendships with many other expatriates as well as people passing through who were often invited to lunch after the Sunday service and who would then stay in touch. Helen kept a guest book which remains a remarkable record of not just names and addresses, but also of meals served and relationships developed. Few people have a longer Christmas letter list of friends to keep in touch with than did Helen and Gene.

During their years attending ASN, Helen and Gene started and helped maintain the Sunday post-service Spiritual Discussion time that brought in, held, and nourished many people in the church community. Friends still remind each other of the power, deep sharing, and strength of community generated.

Helen and Gene were loving grandparents and delighted in visits and messages from their five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. In Ecuador, they shepherded three grandchildren through an impactful high school semester in Quito and generously hosted several of their friends throughout their college years. Helen was effusive in her support of all her grandchildren's endeavors and never missed an opportunity to tell them how much she cared for them and how blessed she felt by her family.

With their sons’ encouragement as they aged, Helen and Gene left Ecuador in 2017 to live with them in the NY-based Quaker Intentional Village-Canaan (QIVC), where they easily fit into community life. Helen often attended services at the Canaan Congregational Church as well as the Meeting for Worship at Old Chatham Quaker Meeting. In both places she quickly developed good friendships and she particularly appreciated, as she grew more feeble, these wonderful women and the care they gave each other and her through to the end. Gene died just as COVID arrived and these new friendships gave her sustenance.

In her final years, the constant reaching out of old and new friends continued, with many stopping by for visits, as her last home offered a convenient break near the oft traveled nearby highways. She always brightened up when someone called or visited, and even in her final months as her voice faded, she could still ask just that right question to bring out a conversation on more than merely superficial topics.

The family is very grateful to Dawn for her nine years of beautiful and loving support as Helen’s and Gene’s caregiver, particularly in this case of providing good care to a woman who lived a life of seeing what others needed and of often providing just that in both tangible and intangible ways.

Helen died on a beautiful solstice afternoon with her family gathered around her, and with the view of many shades of green in which she frequently delighted visible out her window. She is survived by her son and daughter-in-law Jens and Spee Braun, son Eric Harris-Braun and partner Jean Russell, grandchildren Natalie (Aaron) Lindop-Braun, Lucas Braun, Caleb Braun (Melanie Voorsanger), William Harris-Braun, and Lily Harris-Braun, and great-grandchildren Theo and River Lindop-Braun.

A memorial service will take place at the Old Chatham Quakers’ meetinghouse at 2pm on Saturday, Sept. 19 (address and Zoom link on the Old Chatham Quakers' homepage https://www.oldchathamquakers.org). Another service in Ecuador is being planned. Memorial contributions may be made to CIF at https://www.cif.org.ec/.