Helene Ageloff

1935 - 2024

Helene Berleant Ageloff was born March 24,1935 in Buffalo, New York, to Bernard and Elizabeth Berleant, and lived in Buffalo for the first two decades of her life. She attended the University of Buffalo, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree. She later earned a Master's degree in Social Work at the University of Maryland. She was first married to Dick Wilson and later, for many good years, to Larry Ageloff, with whom she enjoyed family and travel. Helene lived and worked in Baltimore as a geriatric social worker. She died on December 31st at the age of 89.

Helene was deeply involved and committed to social justice, and first became active in the civil rights movement during her college years. She traveled as a Freedom Rider to Mississippi in 1961, where she was arrested and imprisoned in Parchman Prison for six weeks. Undaunted, she later demonstrated in the successful effort to integrate the Glen Echo Amusement Park outside of Washington. Her visible presence is recorded in the widely-distributed documentary film, "Ain't No Back to a MerryGoRound" (2024), which is currently being widely shown. Frequently in company with her husband Larry, Helene continued her active involvement in civil rights causes. Throughout her life Helene was also a talented and committed painter of figurative and floral subjects, and often exhibited locally.

Helene is survived and will be deeply missed by her brother Arnold, her college friend and later sister-in-law Riva Schiller Berleant, her step-son Steve Ageloff, his wife Karen, and their children Jacob, Roland, Joshua, and Alexandria, her close friend of many years Susan London Russell, her friends Marilyn Marcus and Ilana Trachtman, her nieces Anne Berleant and Chana Milman, her nephew Daniel Berleant and his wife, Chiou-Guey Liaw, many loving grandnieces and nephews, and by the caring staff at Cardinal Cove in Oakcrest Retirement Community.

Services at Sol Levinson's Chapel, 8900 Reisterstown Road, Pikesville, MD 21208, on Monday, January 6th, 2025, at 10:30 am. Interment Beth El Memorial Park. Please omit flowers. Please refer to Sol Levinson's website for contribution and shiva information.