There are some folks who can’t get enough, and there are some who can’t give enough. Those who know Helena Zentmyer Wackerlin, 95, say she’s one of the latter.
She can tell a good story, play a great tune or two (or more) on the piano, has had a notable impact on two local institutions and, according to her acquaintances, once you meet her she’s your friend for life.
A recent day found her in a storytelling mood as she sat in her modest Aurora home in a creaking blue velveteen swivel rocker with matching terrycloth arm covers. The midday sun streamed through the living room window as Wackerlin, who was born in 1898, re-created visions from the early days of this century.
“I remember being lifted on top of my father’s shoulders to see Theodore Roosevelt speak at McCarty Park. You know, the one by the KC Hall (in downtown Aurora). I don’t remember the year. I think he was campaigning for election to the presidency,” she said.
With its clarity of tone and measured storyteller’s cadence, Wackerlin’s voice belies her age. Additionally, aside from two arthritic knees that compel her to walk with a couple of canes, she seems physically younger than her years.
Her overall demeanor suggests that, while she enjoys regaling others with these reminiscences, she is very much involved in the present. In fact, according to friends, Helena Wackerlin has discovered the secret to lasting youth: stay active and involved.
That involvement has extended Wackerlin’s activities to include major philanthropic projects amounting to tens of thousands of dollars at Naperville’s Naper Settlement and Aurora University.
“Helena is a very special lady who has been incredibly generous to the Naperville Heritage Society,” said Peg Yonker of Naperville. Yonker is a former Heritage Society president and longtime board member. She also counts herself among Wackerlin’s many friends.
Wackerlin is so special, Yonker said, that on Sept. 26, she was treated to an old-fashioned picnic on the grounds of Naper Settlement in honor of her 95th birthday.
Held in conjunction with Public Officials’ Day at the Settlement, the party was complete down to authentic gingham-wrapped favors, hats and custom-designed birthday cake. No fewer than 150 voices, including Rep. Harris Fawell (R-Ill.) and state Rep. Mary Lou Cowlishaw (R-Naperville) sang “Happy Birthday.” Many of the guests had contributed to the 75 letters, photographs, poems and other memorabilia compiled for her 95th birthday scrapbook, said Settlement spokeswoman Stephanie Pennick.
Yonker even wrote a song for the occasion. And, with apologies to “The Sound of Music” composers Rodgers and Hammerstein, she sang “How Do You Thank a Dear Friend Like Helena?” to a tearfully appreciative Wackerlin.
The following week Wackerlin was feted at a private party in the home of Aurora University president Thomas Zarle, where she played the piano for about 25 guests.
According to Roger K. Parolini, a longtime friend who helps AU with fundraising, she played from memory, among other tunes, “Babes in Toyland.” She also recalled her days as a student at AU, when it was still Aurora College and had fewer than 100 students. Today’s enrollment tops 2,000.
Then in mid-October, as one of AU’s oldest living alumni, Wackerlin was flattered when she was invited to be one of two grand marshals in the school’s homecoming parade. Her parade vehicle was a horse-drawn buggy, similar to the one her father owned when she was a child.
“Because of my knees, I had some difficulty getting up into the buggy. But I did it and rode in the parade. It was a lot of fun,” said Wackerlin.
Bill Martin, vice president for university advancement at AU, described Wackerlin as “a very gracious lady. She is a very warm and caring person.”
Yonker echoed that, and added the word generous.
Yonker’s acquaintance with Wackerlin began in December 1977. It was two years after the so-called Halfway House had been moved to Naper Settlement grounds.
Unknown to Yonker, Halfway House had played a special part in the youth of Helena Wackerlin.
When it was moved to the Settlement grounds in 1975 by Urban Development Corp., Marshall Field’s and Sears to make way for Fox Valley Shopping Center, Halfway House had been vacant for some time and was “in a horrible state,” Yonker said.
“The roof had fallen in; the inside stairway was removed; the summer kitchen had all but fallen off,” she said. But structurally it was salvageable, so the Heritage Society held out hope that it would find money somewhere to restore it, she said.
Enter Helena Wackerlin.
“I received a letter from Helena in December 1977 saying she was interested in seeing what she could do to help,” Yonker recalled. “I thought, `That’s interesting. A lady from Aurora wants to help.’ I didn’t know her, but I knew it would take a lot to restore that house.” After the winter weather cleared, Wackerlin made an appointment with Yonker to visit the house in June 1978.
“It was a Sunday afternoon. Because there were no outside stairs, Helena had to be lifted into the house,” Yonker said. There was graffiti painted on all the inside walls. There was evidence of nesting birds. The summer kitchen (a frame add-on) had been left behind for safety reasons when the house was moved. The house smelled bad.
“Helena just walked around,” Yonker said. “She didn’t say very much. She just looked around.”
Then Wackerlin launched into a vividly detailed recollection of her youth, Yonker noted, the same story she retold recently from her blue velveteen swivel rocker.
Wackerlin had been born the only child of Henry and Fanny Zentmyer in a farmhouse on a 700-acre farm northeast of Naperville. The farm was owned by John Christian Bauer of Chicago.
Bauer, who was editor of a newspaper called The Horse Review, was Fanny’s brother. He had purchased the farm as investment property in hopes that he and his wife might retire there some day.
In the meantime, Wackerlin explained, Bauer asked brother-in-law Henry to farm it for him. Although he was a building contractor by trade, times were tough-it was the 1893 depression-so Henry accepted. He, Fanny and eventually little Helena lived there until Helena was 4 years old, when they moved to a home that Henry had built on south 5th Street in Aurora.
Henry’s parents, Jacob and Rebecca Zentmyer, were living in a frame home on Naperville’s west side. It was a home the elder Zentmyer had built for his bride in 1861.
They moved out of it to farmland in an area called Copenhagen Corners (in the vicinity of Illinois Highway 59 and 83rd Street), which was where Henry grew up. They then returned to Naperville after a corn shredder took one of Jacob’s hands. After the accident, Wackerlin’s grandfather became a medicine wagon salesman.
Wackerlin recalled he traveled the countryside with a wagon full of special teas, spices, liniments and patent medicines. He stored his inventory in an upper room in that frame house, and folks from town would visit and buy medicines, spices and even snuff.
A few years ago Wackerlin had an opportunity to visit that home. Although her grandparents hadn’t lived there for decades, and even though the room didn’t contain so much as a single tea leaf, according to Yonker, when Wackerlin opened the door to that storage room the still-lingering aroma of spices, medicines and teas swept her back to her childhood.
“On the days we would visit my grandparents, we would eat breakfast very early and climb into the buggy,” Wackerlin said. It was about a nine-mile trip, and it took the whole morning, traveling east on what is now New York Street to get to Naperville. It was then a country dirt road.
About halfway (where Fox Valley Shopping Center is) stood a two-story brick farmhouse built close to the road. Wackerlin recalled that all three would crane to see that building, since the first one to spot it got to yell, “I see halfway house!”
As they passed, Wackerlin recollected, halfway house’s inhabitants would wave to travelers.
“We’d get to my grandmother’s in time to have dinner, then clean up the kitchen and visit a little. Then we had to leave for home,” Wackerlin said.
After she told her story, Wackerlin asked Yonker what she could do to help restore the old farmhouse. It seemed to her to be the most fitting memorial to the memory of the Bauers and the Zentmyers she could find. Helena Wackerlin funded the complete restoration, including the addition of a new summer kitchen.
More important, Yonker noted, was the donation of an entire house full of furnishings.
“I had an attic and a basement full of hand-me-downs from my parents and grandparents,” Wackerlin explained. “It was awfully cramped in here with all that stuff. So I told them they could have whatever they needed to furnish Halfway House.”
Yonker listed rope beds, dressers, parlor furniture, tables, chairs, ironing board, sewing machine, cradle, stair carpeting and rods, curtains, shelves, books, spinning wheel, wash tub, lamps and quilts. “Absolutely everything and anything needed to completely furnish that house Helena had,” she said.
“It was all antique and appropriate to the period (in which) the house was built. But best yet, it was all in pristine condition. Helena never throws anything away. It was just wonderful.”
Thanks entirely to the generosity of Helena Wackerlin, Halfway House was dedicated, fully restored, in October 1980, Yonker said.
But Wackerlin wasn’t finished. When she learned that the Heritage Society could obtain the one-room Copenhagen Corners schoolhouse from the estate of candy heiress Helen Brach, she stepped forward to help fund that project.
“Since it had been where my father went to school, I felt like it was something I had to do,” Wackerlin explained.
Other projects on the Settlement grounds Wackerlin has helped with include a new organ for Century Memorial Chapel, painting and stenciling the chapel’s interior and putting in the lower level of the Settlement’s new Pre-Emption House.
Helena Wackerlin is also a life-member of the Naperville Heritage Society. Yonker calls her “an angel, a cherished friend. Once she has you for a friend, Helena never forgets you.”
Pennick of Naper Settlement, who had made a marzipan re-creation of Halfway House as part of Wackerlin’s 95th birthday cake, said, “As soon as you meet (Helena), you feel a kinship with her. She is truly a good person.”
Wackerlin’s philanthropic work with Aurora University began with restoration of the main administration building, Eckhart Hall. Built in 1911, Eckhart Hall held the school’s library, gymnasium, offices and some classrooms, according to Parolini. Her second project was restoration of what is called Lowry Chapel.
“It’s a chapel, not a meeting room. I can remember every day, Monday through Friday, when the bell rang at 10 a.m. That meant we would all go to the chapel for a half-hour service,” Wackerlin said. “We would sing and pray, have a little sermonette and listen to announcements. It was as much a part of my day as the classes I went to.”
When she learned AU wished to restore the chapel, she wanted to be a part of that, too. She has also helped with the purchase of paintings and murals depicting the school’s 100th anniversary, Parolini said.
“They had a couple walls that could use some paintings,” Wackerlin said.
Minnesota artist Lloyd Herfindahl was retained to paint the murals and also provide paintings to hang on the walls in Eckhart Hall, said Parolini.
“Helena is a very generous woman. But she makes up her own mind about what she will help with. She knows exactly what she wants to do,” Parolini said.
Cousin John Bauer, 80, of Sycamore was born in the same farmhouse as Helena, though 15 years later. He is the grandson of John Christian Bauer. The farmhouse today still stands northeast of the intersection of Bauer Road and Loomis Street in Naperville.
Bauer said that because Helena and her husband, Jake, who died in 1967, never had any children, Helena has more time and is able to be more generous with others, as well as with members of their family.
“I recall that she did a lot for another cousin of ours who was blind but wanted to remain independent,” Bauer noted. Additionally, Wackerlin has always been “just plain nice as far as I know.”
Bauer said that the Wackerlins worked very hard when they were young. She and Jake had invested in a service station in 1927, said Wackerlin. Although he’d been raised on a farm as well, Jake never felt suited to farming, she said.
“It was before service stations were so popular. My husband pumped gas and I had a little lunch counter and store where folks could pick up supplies they needed,” Wackerlin said.
The station was located at Aurora’s city limits on Ohio Street, and they catered to local as well as tourist trade, Wackerlin explained. They lived on the premises until Jake decided to retire at age 51, in 1946.
Wackerlin said friends used to say that she and Jake were lucky to be able to retire so young. Jake’s response, she said, was, “Lucky, hell! We worked long and hard and saved all our money.”
Helena Wackerlin is a humble woman of simple tastes who shies from the spotlight, Yonker said, adding that she didn’t even own a color television set until recently.
The lyrics of Yonker’s song ask, “How do we show her our appreciation for all the countless generous things she’s done?”
By the warm glow of appreciation on Helena Wackerlin’s face when she speaks about her friends and her recent birthday parties, it’d be safe to say she knows how grateful they are.
