Helen B. Herbold, 94, previously of Newtown, a registered nurse, synchronized swimmer, and certified yoga instructor, died September 1 at the Whittier Rehabilitation and Skilled Nursing Center in Ghent, N.Y. Born Helen Maryann Barry on March 31, 1920, in Chicago, she was one of nine children of Anna Cullen Barry and Michael J. Barry. She was the last surviving sibling. 

She enjoyed a long career as a registered nurse after graduation from St Bernard's School of Nursing at Loyola University in Chicago in 1941. She joined the war effort by working for the American Red Cross, and shortly thereafter married Albert H. Herbold, Jr, in a wonderful marriage that lasted 37 years, until his death in 1980. After the war, Mrs Herbold worked in several Chicago area hospitals, and upon moving to Newtown, she took some time off to raise her two sons, Rusty and Barry.

She returned to nursing as a private duty nurse with a single client, and later worked in nursing homes and for many years as a psychiatric nurse at the former Fairfield Hills Hospital, until her retirement. When she moved to Newtown, in 1959, she took up the practice of yoga, at a time when many people thought it was a food group. Upon her retirement, she was able to spend many hours perfecting her yoga, and later became a certified yoga instructor, teaching at the Woodbury Yoga Center and the Newtown Senior Center, well into her eighties.

A lifelong swimmer, Mrs Herbold also joined the Danbury Dolphins Synchronized Swim Team in her retirement, and the Dolphins traveled widely across the Northeast, winning a plethora of awards and medals.

Her son Barry, and his wife Jacquelyn Carter; former daughter-in-law Gloria Douyon; and  two grandchildren, Laura French, and husband Edward, and Barry M. Herbold II; and dozens of nieces and nephews and grandnieces and nephews survive Mrs Herbold. In addition to her husband, her son Albert H. “Rusty” Herbold III predeceased her. 

Barry said his mother was devoutly religious and Christian in her ways, and, he added, even when she was blind and confined to a wheelchair in the nursing home, she would oftentimes say, “What can I do to help?”

A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated in St Rose of Lima Church, Newtown, Friday, September 5, at noon. Interment will follow in St Rose Cemetery. Friends may call at the Honan Funeral Home, 58 Main Street, Newtown, Friday morning from 9:30 to 11:30 am.

Memorial donations may be made to the Alzheimer’s Association, 225 North Michigan Avenue, Floor 17, Chicago IL 60601, or at www.alz.org.