Got an e-mail from the neighborhood list:
Helen Wishon, former Southeast Priority Board member and past president of the Neighborhood Leadership Institute Alumni Association, died yesterday. As a South Park representative on the Priority Board she worked to beautify her neighborhood and to provide positive opportunities for the youth in her area.
While a member of the Southeast Priority Board Helen served as Chair of the Housing Committee, and on the Executive and Land Use Committees. She planned and organized Southeast’s annual recognition dinner for for many years. She was a tireless and generous advocate for stray animals.
Helen was one of my heroes. She was willing to fight to be heard- although some took her just for being old and bitter. At one time, she owned “Alexanders” the bar on Brown Street, that was as famous for it’s drink and drown nights as it was for being next to the Todd Burlesque. Both are now an empty green field between an old Dayton firehouse that’s been turned into a house- and a lot that has had two of the ugliest buildings ever- first a Rally’s burger drive through and then a “Medicine Shoppe” drug store that’s never really opened.
The block used to have character- just like it had Helen- a character. At times she was the foil to the neighborhood machine- and others, she was its strongest advocate. She may not have been a “preservationist”- but, her home was always not only well kept, but had the most spectacular display of flowers around. Helen fought for the less fortunate, for the class of people who didn’t know they had a voice. She was a shrewd businesswoman, who understood there had to be balance between what was feasible for business- and what could be expected by the community. Her work on the priority board was all volunteer- and she took it seriously.
South Park has lost a few of its grand dames over the last few years. I’ll still miss Betty Jane John, Pat Breidenbach and now Helen. They were all strong women, who were fearless and lived life on their terms.
Those who knew Helen could probably add quite a few anecdotes to this brief remembrance, and I hope you do.
I’ll just remember that if it hadn’t been for Helen, there never would have been water spigots on the Burns Avenue center boulevard- and now, there may not be someone to haul out the hose and water the plants anymore. That small gesture may not be missed by most, but, if that’s the small change you can make in the world- and just a few notice it, then you’ve made a difference.
Helen made a much greater contribution, and she will be missed.
[add] Services for Helen will be on Monday February 2, 2009 at the Burns Avenue Gospel Mission Chapel located at 64 Burns Avenue at 6:30pm. Friends and family are welcome to gather after the service for light refreshments at the South Park Tavern located at 1301 Wayne Avenue. Contributions to SICSA [1] in Helen’s name may be made in lieu of flowers.
2 Comments To "R.I.P. Helen Wishon"
#1 Comment By Denise Lyke Painter On November 14, 2018 @ 3:42 pm @ 3:42 pm
I have a much different opinion of Helen, and I’m glad after all this time to finally be able to tell my story. In the mid ’80s I was living in Dayton with my husband, who was a military officer. We bought a house on Wyoming Avenue, but I didn’t live in it very long. As soon as we were away from the base my now ex resumed the physical abuse that I had lived with in TN before he joined the military, despite his promises that he was a changed man. He was – he got worse.
After he tried to kill me a third time, I left him, slept in my car for two weeks in January on WSU’s campus where I was a student, and then shared a house for a while near campus with a couple of other students as a couch surfer. I managed to find a job and started looking for a small, affordable apartment. That’s when I met Helen.
Helen was pleasant but all business when she showed me the apartment, and I liked the location and the amount was what I could afford on my waitressing job at Pizza Hut.
Two weeks after I had moved in, I had a couple of friends over to study. About an hour after we got there, there was a knock at the door. It was Helen. She asked me out into the hall, then told me I was not allowed to have male visitors in my apartment.
Say what?
I protested but it did no good. I had to go in and ask my friends to leave, since they had ridden together (one was male, the other female). I left as well and we continued studying at the library.
Did I mention, by the way, that my apartment was above Alexanders? My neighbors were for the most part men, and most were elderly and alcoholic. I would see them return from the local liquor store with grocery bags full of clinking bottles, and later that night I could hear the men on both sides of my apartment vomiting in their bathrooms. But the apartment was inexpensive, furnished, and, I thought, safe, so I stayed.
About two weeks after the incident where my friends were asked to leave, I was again meeting friends and we decided, since there was a bar below, to meet in Alexanders, have a beer and decide where we were all going to have dinner. I had never been inside Alexander’s before. When I arrived I paid the cover charge asked for and noted that Helen was an advocate for animals, as there was a display by the door asking people to sign a petition about the local animal shelter. I loved that, and it made me feel better about her, because I love animals too. A few minutes later, however, as I was sitting at the table with my friends, she came up to the table and told me, in front of my friends, that I had to leave. She even told my friends that they could stay, but I was not allowed in her bar. I was floored, and embarrassed, but I quietly left, with my friends, who were again encouraged to stay – overly so, I would say. I have wondered for years what she would have said to them about me had they have done so.
In both cases, the group I was with was mixed sexes. I was in the middle of a divorce and while I was seeing someone quietly, I had to be careful about how I behaved publicly. So a few days later when I was on my way to another study group, I asked my two male friends who I was riding with to stay in the car while I ran up to my apartment to get my bookbag.
I found my soon to be ex waiting on me in the hall. He knew all about me, my comings and goings, about having friends in the apartment, about having a beer with my friends in the bar. He dragged me into my own apartment and beat me as he related information to me, and told me he had become “good friends” with Helen. He made sure I knew that he and Helen were buddies now, and that I didn’t have an ally there.
After he left, my friends came up to find out why I hadn’t come down, helped me clean up and helped me pack as much stuff as possible into my car, which wasn’t running at the time, but was parked in front of a friend’s house about a block away. Then I took what I could carry in my bookbag and stayed with a female friend for a few days until I could borrow enough money from the few family members who still believed in me to move into another apartment a few blocks away. The day after the beating I came back and got the rest of my things, left the key on the table and the door standing wide open. She had the gall later to accuse me of stealing some of the crappy furnishings in the tiny apartment.
But the story doesn’t end there. I was buying the non-working car from a co-worker who had quit at Pizza Hut. One night the former co-worker called me at work and demanded the car back. When I pointed out I had been making payments on it despite it not working, she didn’t care. She said the payments were for use while I had it, but she wanted it back now. So I told her where she could find it, went and got anything out of it that belonged to me that night, and left the key on top of the passenger front tire.
I drove down that street almost daily and I noted that the car was still there, more than a week after she had demanded it back. A few days after that, I had just gotten home from school when there was a knock at my door – and to my surprise it was the men who had lived on either side of me at Alexander’s.
They said Helen had told them where I was currently living – interesting, since I hadn’t told her or much of anyone – again, trying to avoid the ex. Then they said they wanted to buy the car I had left sitting on the street two blocks behind the bar in front of a fellow student’s house. I informed them that it wasn’t my car. One of them then suggested that it was “street law” that I did own it, and offered me $200 cash, right there, to sell it to them. I again insisted the car was not mine, and I would not sell it because I legally couldn’t do so. We went back and forth several times like this, then I finally asked them to leave. As they were going down the steps and I was closing the front door, I heard one say to the other “I guess she ain’t hurtin’ for money as bad as they think she is.” I’ve always wondered, to this day 38 years later, who “they” were. That I was somehow being set up I realized from the moment I saw these men on my porch.
My ex-husband bragged to me on multiple occasions about things he knew about that happened there at Alexanders, like the study session. He gave me information that could have only come from one person – Helen. And the door at the foot of the stairs in back of the building had to be opened by a key – you couldn’t just walk in and the people that lived there wouldn’t let you in – unless they knew you. So either Helen or one of my neighbors let my abuser into the building, but not into my apartment, and enabled him to assault me yet again. I’m just thankful that he didn’t try to kill me again by throwing my down a flight of stairs. That’s what happened at our home the night I left him for good.
I’m now an animal rescuer myself and I keep remembering back to her. I’ve helped a number of women escape the cycle of abuse as well. She could have done that too, but she instead chose to enable my abuser. She knew I had left my husband and why, but chose to take up with him anyway. I’m glad Helen is dead. I hope she died screaming and afraid, the way I came so close to doing. May her soul burn in hell.
#2 Comment By David Esrati On November 14, 2018 @ 5:55 pm @ 5:55 pm
Denise,
Thank you for your chilling and awful story.
As you see, this post is 9 years old- and no one else left a remembrance.
They say to speak kindly of the dead- this was my attempt.
Helen did do some good things, but, as we now know- she also did some shitty things.
Thank you for your experiences.
Maybe others will now come forward.
I’m deeply sorry this happened to you.