Helen Cumming, 97, teacher, native
Helen McGlynn Cumming, a former teacher who lived her entire life on Catoonah Street, died on Thursday, Jan. 9, at Danbury Hospital. She was 97 years old and the widow of Donald W. Cumming.
Mrs. Cumming was born in a house on the south side of Catoonah Street and when she married her neighborhood boyfriend in 1934, she moved across the road to 28 Catoonah Street, where she lived the rest of her life.
A daughter of Peter and Mary Ellen Hennelly McGlynn, Mrs. Cumming was born on Feb. 21, 1905, at 29 Catoonah Street. Her father died when she was four and her mother died three years later. She and her four siblings were raised by their aunt, Jenny Hennelly, who was 30 and single when the McGlynn children were orphaned.
“Taking care of family was taken for granted,” Mrs. Cumming said many years later.
She attended Ridgefield schools — in 1914 she was one of the children selected to dig the first spadesful of dirt at the groundbreaking for the Benjamin Franklin Grammar School — now the “old high school” on East Ridge.
She graduated from Ridgefield High School and from Danbury Normal, now Western Connecticut State University in 1926. She taught seventh, eighth and ninth grades at the former Locust Avenue School in Danbury.
After her marriage, she began raising a family. Her husband, Don, had been a Harvard meteorologist who lost his job due to the Depression and returned to his hometown, where he worked for the post office and was a volunteer fire chief for many years. He died on the day after his birthday in 1953, and Mrs. Cumming began raising three children, aged four to 17, as a single parent.
Though she was nearing a century in age, Mrs. Cumming was sharp-witted and full of memories. She delighted in describing life in the village before roads were paved and when horses were still the chief mode of transportation. Just two doors east of her was Harry Thomas’s blacksmith shop and, across from the firehouse, the old B.E. Sperry Livery Stable.
Mrs. Cumming enjoyed socializing and frequent visits from family and friends. “I’m independent, but not lonely,” she said in 2000 when she marked her 95th birthday. “Never a day goes by that someone doesn’t stop by. And God is always with me.”
Mrs. Cumming was a member of St. Mary’s Church and of the Rosary Society.
Surviving is a son: Paul F. Cumming of Ann Arbor, Mich.; a daughter: Dr. Ann Kanaan, D.O. of Harlingen, Texas; a nephew: George McGlynn of Danbury as well as 10 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
A son, Peter Cumming, died in 1998. Her three brothers and a sister all died before her. One brother was Father Francis H. McGlynn, who had been provincial general of the Holy Ghost Fathers, an order that at one time had a seminary on Prospect Ridge.
A Mass of Christian Burial was celebrated on Saturday in St. Mary’s Church. Burial will follow in St. Mary’s Cemetery.
Memorial contributions to the Visiting Nurse Association, 90 East Ridge, Ridgefield, CT 06877 would be greatly appreciated.
The Kane Funeral Home was in charge of arrangements.