Helen Marie Engelbrecht

GRANVILLE — Mrs. Helen Marie Hawthorne Engelbrecht, 92, of Granville died Monday, July 10, 2017, at Rush University Medical Center, Chicago. A long-term breast cancer survivor, she was diagnosed with chronic leukemia in 2011, which progressed to acute leukemia only in 2017, and she succumbed to a correlated stroke after just a brief hospitalization.

Helen Marie Hawthorne was born June 19, 1925, in Spring Valley, Bureau County, the elder daughter of Edw. E. and Olive S. (Wood) Hawthorne. She married first Ernest K. Odum Aug. 27, 1955. They later divorced. She married Kenneth W. Engelbrecht in the First Congregational Church of Granville (now UCC, Congregational) on Aug. 29, 1959.

Mrs. Engelbrecht was educated in the local schools. She attended Granville Grade School and graduated from Hopkins Township High School in Granville in 1943, where among her other activities, she played clarinet in the concert and marching bands, besides being a member of 4-H. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Home Economics Education and a Master of Science degree in General Home Economics from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.

Upon completing her bachelor's in 1947, Mrs. Engelbrecht returned to Granville and taught home ec at HTHS until 1950. She then completed her master's degree and taught home ec for eight years at J. Sterling Morton High School in Cicero/Berwyn. She taught at Illinois Valley Community College part-time for several years soon after its establishment in the 1960s. From April 1975 until her retirement Jan. 1, 1992, Mrs. Engelbrecht was employed as Administrator of the Putnam County local office of the Illinois Department of Public Aid (later renamed the Illinois Department of Health and Human Services).

Mrs. Engelbrecht was extensively involved in community activities. She was a charter member of Psi Omega women's club, serving as the first and 13th president; she was a member of professional home economics organizations, including the Illinois Home Economics Association (IHEA), AHEA, IVHEA, AVHEA, Marshall-Putnam Home Economists in Homemaking and the Uniters Home Extension unit. Always civic-minded, for many years she helped organize local charitable fund drives. Notably, she served in 1969–70 as the Putnam County Chair of the White House Conference on Children and Youth, and she had been co-area coordinator pushing the referendum to establish IVCC.

Mr. and Mrs. Engelbrecht together served as co-chairs of the successful promotion to create the Putnam County Conservation District in 1966, one of a handful of the earliest such conservation bodies in the state. Mrs. Engelbrecht was the last surviving charter trustee of the PCCD Board, of which she was first and third president, and second and fourth secretary. She was also deeply involved with the organization of the Illinois Association of Conservation Districts, and in 1992 she received the Burton H. Atwood Award for Excellence in Conservation, having served as first elected president of the IACD. She remained a member of several national nature and conservation groups at the time of her death.

In 1990, Mrs. Engelbrecht was elected to the Granville Cemetery Association board; from 1991 to 2011, she served as its secretary-treasurer, the fourth member of the Hawthorne family to serve the cemetery board. In 2000, she helped lead the local opposition to Corridor A and its extension, a proposed highway from Peoria to Chicago: the proposal was defeated. Also politically active, in the mid-1970s she ran for public office, but was narrowly defeated in her quest to become Putnam County Clerk.

Mrs. Engelbrecht was a life-long member of the First Congregational Church of Granville (now United Church of Christ, Congregational) and served as a deacon for a time, among other church offices and activities, including Pilgrim Fellowship in her youth. She held life memberships in the University of Illinois Alumni Association and Phi Mu Fraternity, Delta Beta Chapter (a social sorority), and in the Putnam County Historical Society, of which her father had been a charter member. She was an active founding member of the Hopkins Township High School Alumni Association and was largely responsible for keeping the HTHS Class of '43 in touch over the years, helping organize many class and HTHS AA reunions.

Mrs. Engelbrecht had myriad interests. She enjoyed the pleasures of her profession — of homemaking — the sewing and crafts, food preparation, home decorating and family relationships. She particularly liked family, and pursued family genealogy with gusto, for example, compiling a massive family history for descendants of her grandfather, W.E. Hawthorne, and collecting the extant poems of her uncle, O. Lawrence Hawthorne into a similarly massive volume. She organized and hosted several large Hawthorne family reunions, and kept in close touch with many beloved cousins by letter, phone, and email.

The granddaughter of Granville Echo and Putnam County Record founder, publisher and editor W.E. Hawthorne, and daughter of publisher and editor Edw. E. Hawthorne, Mrs. Engelbrecht was both highly verbal and historically minded, a diligent, reliable source of local historical fact and trivia, besides having a prodigious memory for interesting stories, both about herself and her family and about the wider community. She wrote many detailed historical articles for the Putnam County Record in recent decades, and was featured in an informational video produced by Peoria TV for the HTHS Alumni Association and its museum.

Mrs. Engelbrecht enjoyed writing, and in addition to vast personal correspondence and family documentation, she had recorded the histories of many groups to which she belonged. Believing in organization and the need for recorded regulation, she had drafted the adopted by-laws for the PCCD and the GCA, the Psi Omega club and HTHS AA. She prepared a guidebook for the burials of all veterans for the Granville Legion Post 180.

In later years, Mrs. Engelbrecht eased back from public life, but continued to enjoy her life-long interests in music, reading, travel and family connections. She developed a passion for watching videos and DVDs, including many documentaries about World War II, a period which was the touchstone of her generation and personal life history. A romantic and an idealist, her favorite movie was "Dr. Zhivago," watched over and again until the video tape wore out. She never tired of movies or books or people and activities she enjoyed!

Mrs. Engelbrecht was diligent in her vocation, her avocations and her hobbies, yet she took great pleasure in what was often hard work for the public good. In 2002, the Granville Village Board honored her wide achievements by nominating her for the Illinois Humanities Council Studs Terkel Award, which she received, a significant statewide recognition of which she was justly proud.

Helen Marie Hawthorne Engelbrecht is survived by two daughters, Penelope J. Engelbrecht and Heidi J. E. (Gerald J.) Sobkowiak of Granville; locally by her sister, Mrs. Shirley Mae (Hawthorne) Barnes, a nephew, James E. Barnes, and a niece, Priscilla Sue Barnes (Trent) Tevis, all of Granville; and by two sisters-in-law, Mrs. LuVerne (the late Robert) Buchele of Honolulu, Hawaii, and Mrs. Jeanette (Walter) Whisler of Wilmette, as well as dear nieces, nephews, cousins and friends across the country.

She was preceded in death by her husband in 2003, her father in 1982 and her mother in 1990.

Visitation will be from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday, July 14, at Dysart-Cofoid Funeral Chapel, Granville. Visitation will also be held from 11 to 11:30 a.m. Saturday, July 15, at United Church of Christ, Congregational, Granville. Funeral service will immediately follow visitation at 11:30 a.m. Saturday at the UCC church. Cremation will be accorded with private interment to follow in the Granville Cemetery at a later date.

Memorials may be directed to the Putnam County Historical Society, the Granville United Church of Christ, Congregational, or the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

Online condolences may be made to her family at www.dcfunerals.com.