Brendan Murray, Supervisor

428 Main St, Honesdale, PA 18431

OBITUARIES

Obituaries » Helen Pekaar Franchak

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March 3, 1919 - June 1, 2015

Burial Date June 5, 2015

Funeral Home Hessling Funeral Home

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“Love makes the world go ’round, but laughter keeps you from getting dizzy.” If this is true, then as of June 1, 2015, the world has been spinning a little slower – and we’re all a little bit more off-balance – without Helen Pekaar in it.

Helen passed away at Ellen Memorial Health Care Center in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, at the age of 96. She owed her longevity to the fact that there were so many people who needed for her to straighten them out before she could leave us.

The woman so many of us came to know simply as “Gram” was born Helen Franchak on March 3, 1919, in Archbald, the third of thirteen children of Eva Fedorchak (whose parents emigrated to the U.S. from Verkhovyna, Ukraine) and Anthony Franchak (who emigrated to the U.S. from Wierchomla Wielka, in the Tatra mountains of what is today Poland, in the 1890s).

Helen grew up in Archbald during the Great Depression. She and her family had no indoor toilet, no telephone, no dolls or stuffed animals, no birthday parties, and no Christmas trees. What she and her family did have to make up for their lack of material possessions was each other. Helen and her siblings enjoyed playing house, jumping rope, swimming, picking berries, and playing in the snow. To Helen, a “perfect day” when she was a child was going to watch a baseball game with her brothers and sisters. Helen always remembered (even if she didn’t always follow) her mother’s advice: “Be good to others, even to those who aren’t good to you.”

Helen began working at the age of 14, when her teacher asked her to come over and clean her house for $1.00/day. After completing the eighth grade, Helen left home at the age of 16 to find better employment in New York, initially working as a housekeeper for a family in Port Jervis who owned a furniture store and then working as a housekeeper for a dentist in Brooklyn. Every Thursday on her day off she and her friend would visit Coney Island, where they rode the largest roller coaster in the world (at that time). Helen and her cousin Dorothy also visited the 1939 New York World’s Fair, where the television set made its formal debut (although Helen was more impressed by the 7-foot-tall robot who “smoked” cigarettes).

When Helen was about 20 years old, she moved to Clifton, New Jersey, where she did housekeeping and waitressing for a family that owned a diner. She moved on to her favorite job, as a waitress at Passaic General Hospital. She then worked at a cookie factory (where her job involved squeezing and fluffing marshmallows) and a couple of woolen mills around Passaic, New Jersey until she had her first child, her son Adrian, in 1947. Up until the day she got married, Helen would send part of her earnings every week home to her family in Archbald.

Helen met her husband, Adrian Pekaar, on a picnic to Lake Sebago with her friend in July of 1946 that turned into a blind date when her friend’s boyfriend brought Adrian along with him.
According to Helen, Adrian said that she had the nicest legs he had ever seen, and that if she could cook too, he would marry her that day if she would have him.

As fate would have it, Helen was quite the cook. She learned how to make many dishes from her mother – Helen’s famous pierogies and stuffed cabbages, potato pancakes, paska (Easter bread), and spaghetti and meatballs – and picked up other recipes over the years from other relatives and co-workers, including rolled steak, Swedish meatballs, chicken chow mein, meatball soup, beef stew, stuffing, plum cake, and cherry, apple and pumpkin pie. Helen was always willing to try out a new recipe, provided generally that it did not involve only vegetables (she never did understand exactly what vegetarians ate). Helen and Adrian were married within six months and remained happily married until Adrian’s death on May 4, 2002.

In November of 1970, Helen and Adrian moved to Beach Lake, Pennsylvania, and then to Bethany, Pennsylvania in the early 1980s, where Helen lived until she entered Ellen Memorial Health Care Center in January of 2014. Wherever she lived, Helen helped to make the property beautiful through her gardening skills, as she maintained both vegetable and flower gardens.

Helen was not successful in the way that some people today define success – she only went as far as the eighth grade, did not have a significant career, and was not a wealthy person. And yet, what she lacked in formal education she made up for with common sense, what she lacked in terms of a career she made up for with a good work ethic (she worked hard but knew that work is not everything), and what she lacked in earthly riches she made up for with love and affection. Helen may not have had much but what she did have she gave generously to others. It was impossible to leave Helen’s house without getting something to take home – most often a crocheted doily she had made or a meal.

Helen described herself as a comical, happy-go-lucky person, and those who knew her will remember her for her ability to make them laugh. She particularly loved to sing. As a child, her most memorable moment at the two-room schoolhouse she attended was when she got to sing a solo. As a teenager, she loved sitting in a car with her friends and singing. As a young woman, she named her daughter after a song she liked when she heard it in a record store during her pregnancy (“Diane (I’m in Heaven when I see You Smile)”). As a grandmother, she loved singing first to and then with her grandchildren. And throughout her life, she always sang to people on their birthdays. Her favorite song was “I’ll Be Seeing You,” and those who knew her will see her in every beautiful flower, in every one of her dishes that they make, and in the morning sun, whose warmth she loved to feel.

Helen’s final message to those she knew was, “I love you all. Be good to one another.”

Helen’s family would like to thank the staff at Ellen Memorial for taking such good care of her the last year of her life. Helen’s family would also like to thank her friends at Ellen Memorial, especially Alphonzina, for making her time there more enjoyable.

Helen was preceded in death by her husband Adrian, her siblings Peter, Anna, John, Basil, Michael, Joseph, Paul, and her twin sister Mary, her granddaughter Erica Ann Bugaj, and her great-granddaughter Raenbow Haylee Pekaar.

Helen’s spirit – and her recipes – are carried on by her brothers Anthony (Jermyn), Stephen (Jermyn), and Nicholas (Archbald); her sister Katherine Homish (Eynon); her three children, Adrian (married to Linda Calvanese) of Saddle Brook, New Jersey, Diane (married to Ronald Bugaj) of Honesdale, Pennsylvania, and Daniel (married to Eileen Thompson) of Hawthorne, Florida; her grandchildren Michael Pekaar (California), Edward Pekaar (West Paterson, New Jersey), Darlene Gonzalez (Saddle Brook, New Jersey), Ronnie Fischer (Honesdale, Pennsylvania), and Greg Bugaj (Brooklyn, New York); her step-granchildren Bryan Thompson (Jacksonville, Florida), and Michael Thompson (Jacksonville, Florida); and her great-grandchildren Nicholas Bordean Bugaj and Elena Bordean Bugaj (both of Brooklyn, New York), and Kasey Thompson (Jacksonville, Florida) and Gavin Thompson (Bowie, Maryland).
Funeral services will be held on Friday, June 5th at 10:30 am at Hessling Funeral Home, Inc., 428 Main St. Honesdale. Interment will follow in St. Mary’s Cemetery, Honesdale. Friends may visit Hessling Funeral Home, Inc., 428 Main St. Honesdale on Thursday, 4 to 7.

For well over a century, Hessling Funeral Home has offered traditional and non traditional services. We provide funeral services to all cultures and religious faiths. Making this difficult time a little easier for our families is our primary concern. In this spirit, we created our website, in which you will find information about our services and facilities, useful items such as directions, obituaries, and monuments. Please browse through our website and feel free to contact us with any questions that you may have.