Helen Sclair, 1930-2009: Authority on cemeteries, burial places
Matthew Kruk
chicagotribune.com
HELEN SCLAIR 1930-2009
Helen Sclair, 1930-2009: Authority on cemeteries, burial places
By Trevor Jensen
Tribune reporter
December 20, 2009
Helen Sclair's address during the last years of her life will remain
unchanged into eternity.
A recognized authority on cemeteries and burial practices, Mrs. Sclair
lived in a house on the grounds of Bohemian National Cemetery on
Chicago's Northwest Side since about 2001. Her cremated remains will
rest not far away under a granite stone bearing the inscription, "The
Cemetery Lady, An Advocate for the Dead."
Mrs. Sclair, 78, died of cardiac arrest on Wednesday, Dec. 16, in the
Harmony Healthcare and Rehab Center in Chicago, where she had been
recovering from surgery, said her daughter, Lu Helen Sclair.
Mrs. Sclair lectured around the country to groups like the Association
for Gravestone Studies, taught on burial and genealogical related topics
at the Newberry Library, and possessed encyclopedic knowledge of
Chicago-area cemeteries.
"It made her feel connected to the family and the person who died,"
Sclair said. "It was important for her to see where the person was laid
to rest."
In 1991, she made significant discoveries on Chicago's early years while
scouring records made available through the Illinois Regional Archives
Depository System at Northeastern Illinois University.
She found that some families were trying to get their ancestors' remains
out of Lincoln Park as recently as 1900, leading her to believe that old
bones still linger beneath the lakefront park. Her work also sharpened
knowledge of the Immigration patterns that shaped Chicago.
The documents she dug up were, said one historian at the time, a
million-to-one shot, comparable to finding a painting by an old master
in an attic trunk.
Her fascination with cemeteries dated to her childhood in bucolic Lake
County. Born Helen Young, her mother died shortly after her birth, and
she was raised by close friend of her mother's on a duck farm.
In Studs Terkel's book "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?: Reflections on
Death, Rebirth and Hunger for a Faith," Mrs. Sclair recalled that "the
first thing my foster family did was take me to visit my mother's grave
down in southern Illinois."
Later, she spent weekends tending grave markers at a local cemetery,
trimming the grass and watering flowers. She felt an earlier generation
had a better handle on death, and studied the old rituals that marked
human passing, her daughter said.
Her father, Irvin Young, was an entrepreneur and former missionary in
Africa who helped his friend Marlin Perkins bring gorillas to Lincoln
Park Zoo.
She attended a boarding school in Kenosha and graduated from Carleton
College in Minnesota, then went to work for a small manufacturing
company her father had started on Sheffield Avenue. It was there she met
her first husband, James Henry Holcomb, a machinist who lost his job,
left town to find work and never returned.
She later married Marvin Sclair, who died in 1975.
For 30 years she taught school, mostly at Gladstone Elementary on the
Near West Side. She lived most of her adult life in Lincoln Park until
health problems made it difficult to trek up the stairs to her
fourth-floor apartment on Lill Street.
Through a friend, she learned of an old caretaker's house at Bohemian
National Cemetery that was available for rent.
"Someone asked if she thought it was too weird to live there," her
daughter said. "She didn't, and it was really a wonderful match."
Among other benefits of living in a cemetery, she later said, was that
unlike Lincoln Park, there was never any problem finding a parking
space.
Mrs. Sclair is also survived by a grandchild.
A service is being planned for the spring.
Copyright � 2009, Chicago Tribune