Russia’s loss of a great general in two generations became Sea Cliff’s gain of a fine art student and New York City’s gain of a fine art teacher.  Helen’s grandfather Baron Wrangel became commander for the Caucasus region of the White Army in its fight against the Red Army after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.  (His non-Russian name comes from his German ancestry.)  He won a reputation in the territory he controlled as a fair and progressive administrator, but he soon lost half his army.  In 1920 he left Russia and became the leader of the White Russian resistance abroad.

The Nightingale-Bamford private school for girls in New York prides itself in encouraging “creativity, independence, and self-reliance, as well as intellectual discipline.”  Helen had those qualities and began teaching art at the school after she finished Pratt Institute in New York City.  Sea Cliff art teacher Dorothy O’Knefski had encouraged Helen to study at Pratt where she majored in graphic arts.  Her good friend Peggy Costello (’58) remembers when Helen entered school and they took art together in grade school:  “Helen had just arrived in Sea Cliff and her beautifully developed artwork dumbfounded us poor yokels and delighted the teachers.” 

Her strong academic record, her own graphic talent, her cultural sensitivities and her fluent Russian earned her a place as guide in 1963 on the first exhibition of American graphics to tour parts of the Soviet Union, including Armenia and Kazakhstan.  Her curiosity about culture and art and history kept her traveling around the world throughout her life.  In Egypt she worked with archeologist Kent Weeks, discoverer of a lost tomb of the Pharaohs, KV-5.  She traveled up the wilds of the Amazon River and helped create art exhibitions in Japan.  She also traveled throughout Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, Nepal, India, Turkey and Latin America.  In the Turks and Caicos Islands of the Caribbean she lived for months in a tent on the beach of an uninhabited atoll where she helped develop the membership resort of Pine Cay which keeps over 600 of its 800 acres wild.

Her ability to make friends created for her a worldwide network for her long summer vacations, allowing her to travel the globe on her modest income from teaching and art.  She loved teaching and devoted her entire career to the girls at Nightingale-Bamford.  She became head of the school’s art department, and she became as popular with students as Kitty Strohe and Dorothy O’Knefski had been with Sea Cliff students.  Her younger brother Peter says, “She never married but she considered her students members of her family, and she maintained close touch with many of them after graduation.”  After she died on July 31, 1998 of breast cancer, the school named a gallery in her honor.

Helen also practiced what she taught and exhibited her work in graphics and mixed media in several one-woman shows.  She brought to her painting and sculptural assemblages of natural objects her great love of nature and her joy in the world’s variety.