Helena Marie Fabry

Helena Fabry, nee Helena Fabianova, died peacefully on August 18, 2025, surrounded by her son and daughter-in-law. Helena was born on August 23,1925, in Hradec Kralove, Czechoslovakia, and lived through the German occupation during World War II. She made life-long friends skiing, kayaking, and performing amateur theater, friends with whom she would be reunited years later. After the war she became a journalist for the Svobodne Slovo newspaper. Her editor sent her to the small Czech town of Louny, where she wrote a daily page of local news. Her reporting displeased the Communist Party, and after the coup d'etat in February 1948 she was expelled from the Journalists Union and eventually forced to flee the country. She spent almost two years in refugee camps in the American zone of occupied West Germany, where she met and married Milan Fabry, a fellow Czechoslovak refugee.
The couple immigrated to the United States in 1950, beginning their lives in Heath, Massachusetts, as valet and cook to retired Rev. Dr. Howard Chandler Robbins and Mrs. Mary Louise Baylis Robbins. They moved to Washington, DC, later that year and then with the U.S. military to Munich, Washington again, and Brussels. In 1958, when Milan got a job with Sears Roebuck, Helena moved first to Chicago and then to Vienna, Austria, where Milan became a Sears buying officer. Helena loved Vienna, where she gave birth to her only child, Steven Fabry, and where she pursued her passions for the mountains, opera, and art. The family returned to Chicago in 1968, and Helena became involved in her community, eventually heading the Student Cultural Enrichment Committee for the Wilmette, Illinois, PTA and working at Imperial Clevite. She adored Chicago's architecture, theaters, the Lyric Opera, and the Art Institute, and she taught skiing to high school students in the Snowflake Club. Helena also decided to complete the college education she had not been able to have in Czechoslovakia, obtaining a degree in anthropology.
After Sears transferred Milan and Helena to Washington in 1984, Helena worked for several years in the library of the Center for Hellenic Studies. She also was an active member of the local chapter of SVU, the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences, including running the treasure chest table at the annual SVU Christmas bazaar and supporting Czech and Slovak schools in the Washington area. After the 1989 Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, she volunteered at the Citizens Democracy Corps to support the changes in Eastern Europe. She was then also once again able to travel to Czechoslovakia, reuniting after 41 years with family and friends. In later years Helena became a docent at the Library of Congress and enjoyed giving tours of that building's treasures. She loved the National Gallery and the Phillips Gallery, as well as the Opera and the Studio and Synetic Theaters, and she continued to ski into her 90th year. Helena adored traveling; in addition to most of Europe, she visited more than 40 other countries, from Argentina to Yemen.
In January 2022, Helena moved from Bethesda to Takoma Park, where she met wonderful neighbors and made new friends who enriched her final years, and where she enjoyed working on her very shady garden. The consequences of COPD and a weakening heart eventually brought an end to almost 100 years of a remarkable life. Helena is survived by her son Steven Fabry, her daughter-in-law Kathleen Milton, and her nephew Jiri Vogel and many cousins and extended family members in the Czech and Slovak Republics. A memorial service is expected to be held in September; please consult the website of the Pumphrey Funeral Home, www.pumphreyfuneralhome.com, for updates. In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to Foundation Fighting Blindness, www.fightingblindness.org, or to the Synetic Theater, www.synetictheater.org.