Helen Bethell, a leader in local and state conservation for almost five decades, died on October 19. She was 94.
Born February 13, 1932, in Greenwich, Connecticut, Helen Marie Anne Delage was the third of nine children. She graduated with honors from Russell Sage College in Troy, New York, and went on to earn a master’s degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
“As predicted by a palm-reading at Fletcher in the spring of 1954, my first career was brief,” she wrote later. “For ten years—less a delightful interlude roaming Europe on a Fulbright scholarship—I worked in New York as an international economist, first for a bank, then for a well-known oil consultant, and finally for an international oil newsletter.”
At a Manhattan press party in February 1962 she met John Bethell, an editor at McGraw Hill. “There was a blizzard that night,” he recalled, “and on the way home I wrote ‘Helen’ on the snow-covered hoods of parked cars.” The two married eight months later.
Bethell was appointed editor of Harvard’s alumni magazine in 1966, and the couple moved to Essex with their two-year-old daughter, Sara. Two more children followed: Hugh in 1967, and Thomas in 1969. By then the Bethells had bought a century-old house on School Street in Manchester. The house needed work, and Helen did most of the carpentry, painting, and wallpaper-hanging herself.
“Eventually, as maternal and household management duties waned,” she would later write, “I wandered ever more deeply into conservation issues, serving in town government and with nonprofits.” In 1978 she was invited to join the Manchester Conservation Commission. As a new member, she researched and drafted the Town’s first Open Space Plan and secured Town Meeting support for putting tax-title woodlands into conservation. As chair of the Commission, she persuaded Town Meeting to adopt a non-zoning wetlands bylaw and to support the hiring of a conservation administrator.
Helen was named Executive Director of the Manchester-Essex Conservation Trust in 1982. She led the Trust for thirty years, coordinating its outreach in land acquisition, community relations, and fundraising, as well as representing the Trust before Town boards. From 1992 to 2012, she also served the statewide Massachusetts Association of Conservation Commissions (MACC) as director, treasurer, vice president, and president.
Her paralegal and interpersonal skills earned her the Town of Manchester’s Outstanding Volunteer Award in 1989, the Massachusetts Audubon Society’s “A” Award in 1992, and the MACC’s President’s Award in 2011.
“Helen has been, and continues to be, my model for conservation advocacy,” said Steve Gang, chair of the Manchester Conservation Commission. “Unstinting in data collection, and fierce in defending wetlands, watersheds, habitats, and just plain beautiful lands.”
Helen was happiest in “the natural, as opposed to the built, environment.” In the summer, she and John sailed in Maine and Maritime Canada, visiting remote harbors and meeting local people. She also enjoyed walking in the Manchester and Essex woods and cross-country skiing. Keenly interested in social-justice issues, she was a close follower of domestic and international affairs.
Survivors include her husband, John, and children Sara, Hugh, and Thomas; her grandchildren, Henry and Annie Bethell; her older sister, Claire Metz; brothers Paul, Richard, and Robert; and almost twenty nieces and nephews. She was predeceased by her younger sister, Regina Morus, and her brothers George, Edward, and David.
A memorial service will be held at St. John’s Episcopal Church, Beverly Farms, on Friday, November 6 at 11 a.m. Contributions in Helen’s memory may be directed to the Manchester-Essex Conservation Trust.
