Helen Harris

November 4th, 2025

Helen, So sad to find out of your passing.I’m glad I was able to send you pics of your family in our genealogy search.Hope your family will fondly remember you as a cherished soul… love, cousin karen

~karen irene marcus
~my late mom’s aunt’s daughter, kenosha wi.

July 16th, 2025

Helen was my yoga student, friend, and mentor. I had an immediate connection to her when I took over a day-time yoga class attended mostly by seniors at Highland Park Health and Fitness Club almost 25 years ago. She was a timeless beauty with incredible strength. Grace with attitude. She would fondly call me “Teach” even though I felt like I was learning more from her than she could ever learn from me. In her I saw a better version of myself.

She was the leader of class. When the health club decided to end their arrangement with the seniors’ center, she was one of the students who came up to me and said “find a place where you can still teach us yoga”—and they made it clear that they didn’t want to pay more than $8 a class for it. With only six of them insisting that we do this, I thought “where in the world would I find such a place to make this work?” After all, teaching yoga was not my full-time job. But weirdly enough, and truly through the grace of G_d, I found Center for Holistic Medicine which offered to let me use one of their rooms for our class at a price that we could afford.
I think the people at the Center thought my students would be showing up with canes or walkers, or even in wheelchairs when I told them their ages (which, at the time, ranged from 64 to 80). They were shocked when they saw us—and even more shocked when they sometimes would peek into the room to see why sometimes we were laughing so hard that they could hear us in the waiting room.

I called this group of students the “buff seniors” and would propose poses for them to do that most of my fellow teachers couldn’t believe I would try with that age group. It didn’t matter to me if they actually got in the pose, rather I just loved to see how close we could get. Particularly because they almost always surprised each other! For example, I loved teaching inversions because they are empowering. When I proposed we start practicing forearm balance (like handstand but on your forearms), because I thought it would be an easier and more accessible for them than handstand to start, they all thought I was crazy. And then Helen went up in it. Like she had done it all her life, even though she insisted she had not done it before! Seeing her do that pretty much settled it for everyone in the class that doing that pose or any inversion was in the range of possibilities for them. It took some of the students seven years, but eventually every single one of them got up into an inversion—inspired by Helen.

It was when we were working on these crazy poses, we’d all be sitting on the floor sweating and laughing, and I’d say “Age means nothing!” and they all knowingly would nod. It became our mantra and, for me, one of the greatest lessons I learned from them.

As a leader, she was the one who would rally the others to step up and try things, coordinate a yearly lunch, and check on how everyone was doing. When the youngest buff senior had a preventative medical procedure and didn’t come back and stopped responding to my emails, it was Helen who said, “let’s make a charitable donation and send a card” and she took care of coordinating everything. As such, it was Helen who received the strange reply from the student’s family with everything worded in past tense. Helen called me and we figured out that the student had sadly passed. Together, we cried, and Helen helped me to figure out how I should tell the others.

When another student was suddenly diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer, I turned to Helen and asked if she could talk to her. I was no longer teaching the buff senior’s class. But that didn’t end my connection with these two students, nor did it end Helen’s willingness to step in and do what was needed. She contacted the other student, of course knew her doctor, and reassured the student that the doctor was good. Helen invited the other student to start coming to a special yoga class for people who have cancer that Helen attended. The two of them became very close and I’m sure it was partly because of Helen’s support that that student went on to live several more years. And kept up with her yoga practice.

As I said, I had always felt this strong connection to Helen. I thought maybe it was because we were both Jewish, perfectionistic, very dedicated to health and fitness, etc. But it wasn’t until 15 years later that I figured out another piece of it. Helen and I were out to lunch and somehow the topic of her growing up on Ainslie came up. I said to her, “my mom grew up on Ainslie.” Mind you, my mom is about 10 years younger than Helen. Nevertheless, as we talked about—and then I talked with my mom to check the years and address—it turned out that they had lived across the street from each other! Not that they knew each other given the age difference, but that settled for me the missing piece I was looking for. She was next to family, literally. 😊

Every year I send Helen flowers for her birthday—and look up her address online—which was how I just learned of her passing.
Beautiful, graceful, strong, kind, smart, thoughtful, inspiring, and unforgettable. Thank you, Helen, for being such a bright light in my life! I hope these special memories bring a special smile to the hearts of your family and friends and everyone else who loves and has been touched by you—as well as to those who never had an opportunity to know you. Happy Birthday Beautiful Lady!!!

~Janet Szumal
~Teacher and friend, Long Grove, IL

April 2nd, 2025

We had the privilege to know Helen for many years. She was kind , thoughtful, and loving. She will be greatly missed.

~Philip and Beverly D Harris
~brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Sun City