Helen Geiger

Helen Winograd Geiger, 100 years old, died peacefully in her sleep on Monday, November 22, 2010 at her home in Mitchellville, Maryland. Born on June 13, 1910 in New York City, she was the daughter of Sigmund Winograd and Sadie Fellman Winograd who immigrated to the United States from Russia and Poland respectively. Helen was an artist by profession, specializing in oil portraiture and later sculpture. Helen first earned recognition as an artist at the age of 10 by winning the Wanamaker Gold Medal in 1920 for an oil painting depicting a New York City street scene. During her high school years, Helen attended the Art Students League of New York, studying under noted artists George B. Bridgeman and Guy Pene Dubois. After graduation from high school Helen attended the National Academy of Design in New York City and City College of New York and became an art teacher in the New York City Public Schools. During the 1930's Helen was an artist for several federal public arts programs under the famed Works Progress Administration, including a two year stint with the WPA Easel Painting Project. In 1939, Helen was an artist in residence at the Yaddo Artists Colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. During World War II, Helen toured the country with the U.S. O. Camp Shows as an artist in the Hospital Sketching Program drawing hundreds of portraits of injured servicemen recuperating in military hospitals. Copies of those portraits are now in the Smithsonian collection in Washington, D.C. After the war, Helen settled in San Francisco where she painted many commissioned portraits for Gumps Art Gallery. Helen returned to New York City in 1947 to teach art at the High School of Industry and Art and The High School of Music and Art now the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. In 1951, Helen married Dr. Felix E. Geiger from Vienna, Austria, a U.S. government physicist who worked on the atomic bomb project at Los Alamos, N.M. during World War II and later for NASA on the Mercury and Apollo space missions. After settling in Washington D.C. in 1951, Helen painted at the American University and the Corcoran School of Art where she took up sculpture under Leon Borkowitz. Helen earned her BFA and MFA from the George Washington University and continued painting, sculpting and drawing until her move in 2004 to the Collington Episcopal Life Care Community in Mitchellville, MD. Helen was a generous patron to the Arena Stage, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, The United Jewish Appeal and WETA. Helen spent the past 25 years pursuing her quest to "change the paradigm of aging" by shifting cultural ideas on what it means to be elderly from a stereotypical dependent stage of life to one of active aging where seniors remain fully engaged in economically and socially productive activities. Helen lived by the ethos of active aging remaining vibrant, alert, productive and healthy until the day she died. Helen was also an advocate of many new age sciences, eastern philosophies and healthful living through alternative nutrition. Helen is predeceased by her brother Philip Winograd of Maine, a sister, Sally Berger of New York, a niece, Abigail Winograd of New York and her husband, Dr. Felix E. Geiger of Washington D.C. Survivors include her nephews Robert Berger of Los Angeles, CA, Eric Blume of Bethesda, MD, nieces, Deborah Winograd of Falmouth, MA and Susan Berger of New York City and Jackson Hole, WY and by her devoted personal assistant Pansy Cover of Upper Marlboro, MD. MD. Helen was a unique individual who made an indelible impression on everyone she met and will not soon be forgotten. According to Helen's wishes, her cremated remains will interred in a private ceremony at Mt Ararat Cemetery in Farmingdale, NY. Final arrangements made by Gasch's Funeral Home,Hyattsville. Online remembrances may be left on the Gasch's website.