About Professor Helen Merrick
Helen was born 1919 in Akkerman, Romania to Russian parents and moved with her family to New York City, landing at Ellis Island, when she was almost five. She quickly became fluent in English, while speaking Russian at home. In high school she studied French, walked away with a prize in German; but it was the Spanish language that eventually won her heart. "It's feisty; fun to speak". In college she summered in Mexico to absorb the culture and perfect her accent.
Helen earned an MA in 1958 in Spanish from the University of California at Berkeley. While teaching at San Learndro High School, she was chosen to participate as group leader in the Second State Department Sponsored US-USSR Summer Cultural Exchange Program. In 1962 she was awarded a John Hay Fellowship to earn her MA in Russian at Indiana University, Bloomington. As part of that MA curriculum she spent a semester at the University of Moscow in in '65.
Additionally, Helen worked to get her PhD in linguistics at Sanford, all the while teaching full time at San Jose State and managing 17 residential units!
Helen was energetic and daring. For example, when renovations were occurring at San Jose State and new buildings were being constructed, she bought one of the original, two-story buildings used as offices that was slated for demolition and moved it two and a half blocks in downtown San Jose, to a lot she purchased. She then re-purposed the building to residential apartments. She did this in 1979 before recycling was the norm!
Helen loved life and people, always had a wonderful smile and sense of humor; and her magnetic personality made her classes exciting and popular. She traveled a large portion of the world including all of South and most of Central America, Europe, the Middle East, Australia, New Zealand and some of the Orient.
In 1988 Helen retired from teaching at San Jose State and move to Hawaii in 2007, where she enjoyed learning hula, ikebana, pottery, Japanese brush painting and jumping on the trampoline. She retired from competitive trampoline as the reigning female of the Pacific in the over-90 category at the age of 93! She was still bouncing on the trampoline at 95.
She is survived by two daughters, a granddaughter, and two great grandchildren, all but one daughter living in Hawaii.