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At a Meeting of the
Faculty of Vassar College
held
May sixth, nineteen hundred
eighty-one, the following
Memorial
was unanimously adopted:
Helen Miringoff spent thirty years of her life deeply
immersed in the field work program of Vassar College. She
was, as the Poughkeepsie Journal commented at the time of her death, a vibrant and vital link between the college and the community. She loved them both and she worked tirelessly to help them understand and relate to each other. Vassar
has a long tradition of field study and community involve-
ment dating back to the l9th Century. In the past thirty years that tradition has been maintained and strengthened
largely through the work of Helen Miringoff.
Helen was born in Brooklyn on February 2, l9l6, the
daughter of Samuel and Yetta Frohlich. She grew up in
Brooklyn and attended Corlears Business College and Brook-
lyn College but could not afford to continue to a degree
at that time. She earned her B.A. from Bard College in
l975. Helen worked for 10 years as a secretary and office
manager at Isbet Electric Manufacturing Company in New
York City and from l944 to l946 was with the American Red
Cross at the U.S. Army Hospital in Martinsburg, W. Va.
before coming to work as a secretary in the Public Rela-
tions Office at Vassar in l949 when her elder son started
in the Vassar Nursery School. After a brief interruption
of employment during the infancy of her younger son, she
returned to Vassar in l954. She served in the Field Work
Office from then until her death on March 22, l98l.
Helen grew up in a family which believed you have to
do for yourself but you also have to do for the community.
She exhibited to the community. She exhibited to the community the caring concerns with
which she was raised and which she continued to practice
until her death as a member of numerous boards of directors
Oi a great number of community agencies. Among the organi-
zations to which she gave her committed, selfless service
were Adelphi/Hudson Valley Program, Community Action Agency,
Dutchess County Arts Council, Dutchess County Social Workers
Club, Neighborhood Services Organization, Poughkeepsie
Executives’ Club, the Poughkeepsie Family Development and
Day Care center, the Jewish Community Center and the Vas-
sar Summer Program for Disadvantaged Children of the Poughkeepsie Area. In 1954, Helen was a secretary but clearly no ordin-
ary one. Her drive and energy, her wide-ranging curiosity and compassion, and her shrewd sense of where to turn in
-2-
the community set her apart. Her enormous respect for Eleanor Roosevelt and for Eleanor’s sense that democracy and justice must be built at the local level also impressed anyone who knew her.
When the first director of Vassar’s Field Work Office, Clarice Pennock, retired, and a successor left. Helen ran the office. She ran it exceptionally well, not only administering it efficiently but also reaching out to develop new contacts in the community. The then Dean of the Faculty, Charles Grif-
fin, had decided after careful consideration that the secretary should become the Assistant and Acting Director. He recognized that no superior credentials from outside the community were as valuable to the college as the quite extraordinary ability of Helen Miringoff to persuade Vassar students and faculty and residents of Poughkeepsie that they could learn much from each other. That decision by Charles Griffin and Helen’s elevation to Director in 1970 were among the college’s finer moments.
Helen believed passionately in action informed by knowledge and commitment. Field work gave her one opportunity to put that belief into practice and to spread it around. She did so with enormous enthusiasm and energy. To faculty — often in-clined to knowledge for its own sake — she talked always of the need for action and involvement. To students — some-times eager for involvement but impatient with study — she counseled the importance of knowledge.
Helen knew better than most of us that changing anyone's
perspective requires skill and patience. She did not expect
easy results; she knew how long it takes to get your mind out
of old ruts and think something through in a fresh way. Her
salty tongue helped here. She could draw you up short with a
sharp characterization or a sarcastic question which exposed
whatever shallow or wishful thinking you had been engaging in.
&m you didn't feel that she had diminished you or reduced the
abject. You knew she cared.
She saw clearly the needs of her pupils as individuals.
Field work has not been -- and is not now -- regarded highly
by all members of the Vassar faculty. Helen worked ceaselessly
to expand field work opportunities. She taught the faculty
about field work. With some, she patiently and subtly suggested
often over several years; with others, she served as facilitator
bringing them into contact with agency heads or businessmen to generate a common interest in educational opportunities for Vassar students; with still others, she needled, cajoled and prodded. She used the same techniques of persuasion, prodding and education on agency heads and others in the community in her unstinting efforts to enlist them in contributing to the education of Vassar students.
Her effectiveness is measured in the growth of field work at Vassar — not just in numbers of students but in the range
-3-
of subjects in which it is available and in the numbers of faculty involved. She always took special pleasure in involving more and more faculty in the program. She reached across generations of faculty members and brought the younger and older together in common endeavors. She welcomed new faculty in the most open of ways and never ignored the old friends she had made.
Helen’s many-sided participation in the life of Pough-keesie helped all of her students — undergraduates, faculty and townspeople alike — to see connections between classroom and community more clearly. But she resisted any tendency to view the connections as primarily practical or convenient. You could always count on Helen to raise questions about how much could be learned from particular field work assignments and to urge dropping those with too little intellectual challenge.
Benefits for community programs or for students‘ career plan-
ning remained secondary to the primary purpose of developing
students‘ critical powers and imagination, even in smaller
activities.
Nothing so well exemplified Helen's understanding of the
proper marriage between the life of the mind and our particular
circumstances and traditions as her life-long devotion --
flared with her beloved husband, Hy -- to perpetuating the
study of Yiddish. Those happy few who enjoyed the good com-
pany, food and conversation in her house off Hooker Avenue
lmow what excitement and pleasure she brought to their ex-
Moration of Yiddish. She was proud of the culture which
Jews had created in Europe and the United States, and its
dual appreciation of learning and of community. She exem-
Mified both values in her own life and in her direction of
Hm Office of Field Work.
Respectfully submitted,
M. Glen Johnson, Chariman
Clyde Griffin
Elsie McLaughlin
Faculty of Vassar College
held
May sixth, nineteen hundred
eighty-one, the following
Memorial
was unanimously adopted:
Helen Miringoff spent thirty years of her life deeply
immersed in the field work program of Vassar College. She
was, as the Poughkeepsie Journal commented at the time of her death, a vibrant and vital link between the college and the community. She loved them both and she worked tirelessly to help them understand and relate to each other. Vassar
has a long tradition of field study and community involve-
ment dating back to the l9th Century. In the past thirty years that tradition has been maintained and strengthened
largely through the work of Helen Miringoff.
Helen was born in Brooklyn on February 2, l9l6, the
daughter of Samuel and Yetta Frohlich. She grew up in
Brooklyn and attended Corlears Business College and Brook-
lyn College but could not afford to continue to a degree
at that time. She earned her B.A. from Bard College in
l975. Helen worked for 10 years as a secretary and office
manager at Isbet Electric Manufacturing Company in New
York City and from l944 to l946 was with the American Red
Cross at the U.S. Army Hospital in Martinsburg, W. Va.
before coming to work as a secretary in the Public Rela-
tions Office at Vassar in l949 when her elder son started
in the Vassar Nursery School. After a brief interruption
of employment during the infancy of her younger son, she
returned to Vassar in l954. She served in the Field Work
Office from then until her death on March 22, l98l.
Helen grew up in a family which believed you have to
do for yourself but you also have to do for the community.
She exhibited to the community. She exhibited to the community the caring concerns with
which she was raised and which she continued to practice
until her death as a member of numerous boards of directors
Oi a great number of community agencies. Among the organi-
zations to which she gave her committed, selfless service
were Adelphi/Hudson Valley Program, Community Action Agency,
Dutchess County Arts Council, Dutchess County Social Workers
Club, Neighborhood Services Organization, Poughkeepsie
Executives’ Club, the Poughkeepsie Family Development and
Day Care center, the Jewish Community Center and the Vas-
sar Summer Program for Disadvantaged Children of the Poughkeepsie Area. In 1954, Helen was a secretary but clearly no ordin-
ary one. Her drive and energy, her wide-ranging curiosity and compassion, and her shrewd sense of where to turn in
-2-
the community set her apart. Her enormous respect for Eleanor Roosevelt and for Eleanor’s sense that democracy and justice must be built at the local level also impressed anyone who knew her.
When the first director of Vassar’s Field Work Office, Clarice Pennock, retired, and a successor left. Helen ran the office. She ran it exceptionally well, not only administering it efficiently but also reaching out to develop new contacts in the community. The then Dean of the Faculty, Charles Grif-
fin, had decided after careful consideration that the secretary should become the Assistant and Acting Director. He recognized that no superior credentials from outside the community were as valuable to the college as the quite extraordinary ability of Helen Miringoff to persuade Vassar students and faculty and residents of Poughkeepsie that they could learn much from each other. That decision by Charles Griffin and Helen’s elevation to Director in 1970 were among the college’s finer moments.
Helen believed passionately in action informed by knowledge and commitment. Field work gave her one opportunity to put that belief into practice and to spread it around. She did so with enormous enthusiasm and energy. To faculty — often in-clined to knowledge for its own sake — she talked always of the need for action and involvement. To students — some-times eager for involvement but impatient with study — she counseled the importance of knowledge.
Helen knew better than most of us that changing anyone's
perspective requires skill and patience. She did not expect
easy results; she knew how long it takes to get your mind out
of old ruts and think something through in a fresh way. Her
salty tongue helped here. She could draw you up short with a
sharp characterization or a sarcastic question which exposed
whatever shallow or wishful thinking you had been engaging in.
&m you didn't feel that she had diminished you or reduced the
abject. You knew she cared.
She saw clearly the needs of her pupils as individuals.
Field work has not been -- and is not now -- regarded highly
by all members of the Vassar faculty. Helen worked ceaselessly
to expand field work opportunities. She taught the faculty
about field work. With some, she patiently and subtly suggested
often over several years; with others, she served as facilitator
bringing them into contact with agency heads or businessmen to generate a common interest in educational opportunities for Vassar students; with still others, she needled, cajoled and prodded. She used the same techniques of persuasion, prodding and education on agency heads and others in the community in her unstinting efforts to enlist them in contributing to the education of Vassar students.
Her effectiveness is measured in the growth of field work at Vassar — not just in numbers of students but in the range
-3-
of subjects in which it is available and in the numbers of faculty involved. She always took special pleasure in involving more and more faculty in the program. She reached across generations of faculty members and brought the younger and older together in common endeavors. She welcomed new faculty in the most open of ways and never ignored the old friends she had made.
Helen’s many-sided participation in the life of Pough-keesie helped all of her students — undergraduates, faculty and townspeople alike — to see connections between classroom and community more clearly. But she resisted any tendency to view the connections as primarily practical or convenient. You could always count on Helen to raise questions about how much could be learned from particular field work assignments and to urge dropping those with too little intellectual challenge.
Benefits for community programs or for students‘ career plan-
ning remained secondary to the primary purpose of developing
students‘ critical powers and imagination, even in smaller
activities.
Nothing so well exemplified Helen's understanding of the
proper marriage between the life of the mind and our particular
circumstances and traditions as her life-long devotion --
flared with her beloved husband, Hy -- to perpetuating the
study of Yiddish. Those happy few who enjoyed the good com-
pany, food and conversation in her house off Hooker Avenue
lmow what excitement and pleasure she brought to their ex-
Moration of Yiddish. She was proud of the culture which
Jews had created in Europe and the United States, and its
dual appreciation of learning and of community. She exem-
Mified both values in her own life and in her direction of
Hm Office of Field Work.
Respectfully submitted,
M. Glen Johnson, Chariman
Clyde Griffin
Elsie McLaughlin
