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Note: Helen Mary Surenok was my mother.
Helen and Joseph Seiler met in an unusual way: she was a cautious new driver on her way to visit her father in Good Samaritan Hospital in Clifton, when she was stopped by my father, a police traffic officer, for driving too slowly. Family lore (and there are newspaper accounts of this in my family photo album) has it that he let her go with only a warning, only to find her again the next day, at the same time and in the same place. One thing led to another, as they say, and they were married April 27, 1947. There are numerous pictures taken of them during their courtship in our family album, as well as wedding pictures. Many other pictures are saved elsewhere.
Helen Seiler became one of Cincinnati's first two Policewomen shortly after their marriage and remained in that position until approximately 1961, when she had her first heart attack. After a period of time, she had to leave the Police Department due to her continued poor health. Never one to stay down for long, she returned to police work indirectly, finishing her life as a Civil Service employee, as secretary to police undercover operations. If I chose to go visit her at her job in the old Alms and Doepke Buiding, I had to knock on an unmarked door to be admitted. Occasionally I would interrupt prisoner interrogations by my poor timing. It must have been interesting work.
After years of declining health, Helen suffered a stroke in early July, 1974. She was taken to St. George's Hospital, where she remained in a coma until her death on July 14. On July 9, my 26th birthday, my father called me over to the house and he, my sister, and I openly discussed the decision to have her removed from her life support systems. Joann and I felt that it was the best thing to do given the certainty, expressed by her doctors, that there was no hope for improvement. My father may or may not have heeded our advice; I received a telephone call from my father very early on the morning of the 14th informing me of her death.
So much for the basics. Now to fill in some detail:
According to LDS records, her mother's maiden name is given variously as Mary Liebeding (batch #H002007) and Mary Gendina (film #1760854)
From all indications, Helen was brought up strictly by her father, William Surenok. Stories later in life revealed that, as punishment for minor infractions, she and her siblings had to kneel bare-legged for periods of time on the heating grates in the floor of their house. Another story says that her later heart problems were brought on much earlier when, as a child, she had rheumatic fever which was never properly treated. A final bit of anecdotal evidence from her early life was a newspaper clipping I found after her death, among her personal effects. It was a notice that a particular young man, whose name I've long since forgotten, was missing in action in World war II, shot down over the English Channel. I don't know the significance of the clipping, but it always seemed romantic.
I remember only one story that my mother used to like to tell of her youth: her family's property, at the end of a dead-end street, abutted a cemetery. She said that she and her friends liked to play hide-and-seek there after dark. Apparently she was afraid of very little even then.
Very bright, funny, popular and friendly, she enjoyed her work and was regarded as a superior person all-around by all who knew her. Her friends through work included, in addition to Police Officers of all ranks, lawyers, judges, TV and newspaper reporters, and many others in any number of fields involved in the day-to-day life of the City.
An attractive woman all her life, she was especially so as a young woman. Portraits of her at various stages in her youth reveal a a calm, intelligent face, lovely eyes, and a winning smile. Poor health and uncertainty and strain brought about physical changes in later years, although she remained very highly regarded and sought-after by her friends and peers, and seldom complained about her situation. About 5' 7" and 135 pounds, she retained much of her youthful shape, energy, and love for life until her untimely death at age 51 in 1974.
Helen enjoyed company and the companionship of her friends, especially the women she worked on the Police Department. I remember her special friendships with Joannie Hoffman (who married a judge), Lillian Grigsby (one of the very first African-American policewomen anywhere), Beth Pack, and her best friend, Pat Whalen, who married a cop, Roger Herron, and to this day stays in touch with me. My mother's funeral cortege, although originating outside the City limits at Neidhardt's Funeral Home in Mt. Healthy, contained at least twenty-four Cincinnati Police cars by actual count. She was respected and honored in death as well as in life. She is buried alongside her parents, William and Mary Surenok, and was joined there after his death by her husband, my father Joseph Seiler.
A few of my happier memories of my mother include my pride in the job she held. Friends and strangers were always surprised and impressed by her accomplishments and bearing. When I was a child living in the country, she occasionally would bring me home books to read, after having stopped at the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Library during her work day, and she was a fanatical fan of the Cincinnati Reds and their 'Big Red Machine' of the early 1970's. She and my sister Joann had 'Rosie Reds' jackets they'd wear to attend Reds' games at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati. She had connections everywhere, and I was generally able to get free tickets to almost any event I wanted to attend. In later years she made an arrangement for me to meet a certain policeman at Gate 13, the the press gate at Riverfront, before nearly every Cincinnati Bengals home game. This man would then hand me some other officer's badge, and we'd get into the game for free simply by showing the badges to the gatekeepers.
I remember the night I left home for good, January 11, 1970, and how my mother sat in the living room watching as my friends and I moved out my belongings. As I walked down the snowy sidewalk and away from home for the last time, I glanced back into the lighted living room window and saw my mother, wringing her hands and crying. I later found a note she had slipped in among my few possessions; it read simply, 'Dear Dale- Please be careful, and remember that the door that swung out will always be ready to open again when things get better and you come home.' But although I visited from time to time later, I was gone from home for good.
My mother often drove me to my knothole baseball games as a child so that she could watch me play. One favorite memory is that of the day I collected from a pond near some ballfield a number of baby frogs, which I scooped from the water with paper cups. I guess I meant to release them in our creek, I don't know. Mom had an old Plymouth convertible in those days, and on the drive home we had to make a stop somewhere. While we were away from the car for a few minutes, most of the frogs, a couple dozen of them, escaped from the cups and disappeared into the mysterious innards of the car, where they eventually died. We had quite a time collecting dead frogs for awhile. In later years, my mother and sister would try to attend as many of my high school football games as possible. I remember that they were in attendance at the only game in which I ever scored a touchdown.
My mother didn't have a very active social life as the years wore on, seldom receiving either company or invitations out. This wasn't due to any lack of friends on her part, however. Although she retained her many social contacts, not many people wanted to have to deal with the quirkiness of my father. This statement is not meant as an indictment, but rather an explanation. This had to have hurt her, as she was a very sociable person who enjoyed having a good time. Eventually she took to going on yearly trips with her girl-friends to places like Clearwater and Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She was always working on her sun-tan, even at home; as as she grew older her skin became more wrinkled that it perhaps should have at her age. I remember that her favorite suntan lotion was 'Ban de Soliel'.
Only days after I graduated from high school in 1966, I accompanied my mother to Houston, Texas, where she met with the medical staff at St. Luke's Medical Center about a possible heart transplant. We had a lot of fun on that trip, even though she spent some of it in the hospital undergoing tests. We spent several weeks there in Houston, just the two of us. I have a lot of fond memories of her and her fighting spirit.
In later years she spent more and more time in the hospital as her health deteriorated. I recall that on many occasions, as I was leaving after visiting her, I would see her standing, alone, in the window of her room, waving goodbye to me. I often have wondered what must have been going through her head...she was younger then than I am now. In 1973 she finally had three valves replaced in her heart; ever after, whenever she would get too excited, it was possible to hear the valves clicking away.
Helen was a crack shot with her service revolver, which I still have; a target she shot at the Police firing range, a silhouette of a man with scoring rings centered on his chest, hung on a wall in our basement family room when I was a teenager. She had scored a 98 out of a possible 100 on the test.
There is not a great deal more to say about my mother other than to say that she was a tower of strength and dignity at all times, and withstood the hardships life brought her way with unfailing courage and good humor. She was highly regarded by all who knew her, and was always an example of integrity and honor. Her death hit hard.
Dale Seiler February, 1999
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