Helen C. Snyder

06/06/2001

Helen C. Snyder, 90, of Kimball Farms Retirement Community, 235 Walker St., died Wednesday afternoon at home. Born in Boston on Nov. 26, 1910, daughter of William and Florence Paterson Stowell, she graduated from Revere Public High School and attended Boston University Art School. She studied French at the University of Geneva in Switzerland and later earned a certificate of gerontology at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. In 1941, she married Donald L. Snyder, a partnership that lasted 60 years and that took them, in connection with the United Nations, to Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. After assisting in the establishment of an art therapy program in a psychiatric hospital in Geneva, Mrs. Snyder worked as a volunteer in similar projects in Malaysia, Western Samoa and in the leprosarium run by the Order of St. Mary's in Fiji. After returning to the United States in 1975, she volunteered as an art therapist on the psychiatric unit of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. She and her husband moved to Kimball Farms in 1998. Mrs. Snyder was a member of the Group Psychotherapists of New England and the Religious Society of Friends, which she joined in Geneva in 1953. Active in the Beacon Hill Monthly Meeting in Boston, she and her husband helped form the Quaker Worship Group in Lenox, under the care of South Berkshire Monthly Meeting. She pursued interests in psychology, painting and opera, and enjoyed rambling in the Alps. Besides her husband, she leaves three sons, David Lance Snyder and Keith W. Snyder, both of Washington, D.C., and Courtney P. Snyder of Marblehead; two brothers, William Stowell of Reading and Richard Stowell of Argyle, Texas, and a granddaughter. A memorial meeting for worship will take place at Beacon Hill Friends House, 6 Chestnut St., Boston, MA 02108 (tel. (617) 227-9118) at 1 on Sunday, June 17. ROCHE FUNERAL HOME in Lenox is in charge of arrangements.

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