helen babione - News - The Coastal Star2024-03-28T19:41:35Zhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/feed/tag/helen+babioneCoastal Star: Boca Soroptimist, 90, honored for a lifetime of helping othershttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/coastal-star-boca-soroptimist-90-honored-for-a-lifetime-of-helpin2019-12-04T17:55:13.000Z2019-12-04T17:55:13.000ZThe Coastal Starhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/TheCoastalStar<div><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960919282,original{{/staticFileLink}}" target="_blank"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960919282,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="500" alt="7960919282?profile=original" /></a><em>Helen Babione has lived in Boca for almost 60 years and says she enjoys working with people who need help, especially children and older adults. <strong>Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star</strong></em></p>
<p><strong>By Margie Plunkett</strong><br /> <br />Helen Babione has spent nearly 60 years in Boca Raton, reaching out to help people through her church, community organizations and the Babione-Kraeer Funeral Home that her husband, now deceased, had founded.<br /> Babione, 90, was recently honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the annual Women of Distinction Breakfast of Soroptimist International Boca Raton/Deerfield Beach. She has been a member of the Soroptimists for about 50 years — the same for both the Boca Raton Woman’s Club and Debbie-Rand Memorial Service League.<br /> “I’ve been very blessed by having good friends who help me out,” Babione said. “I don’t do much. I get all the credit — my friends do all the work. And that’s the truth.” <br /> The list of organizations and programs where she has made an impact is long, including the Rotary, Kiwanis and the Caridad Center. She is a founding member of Horses and the Handicapped and Twin Palms Center for the Disabled, and has often co-chaired the Go Pink Luncheon at Boca Raton Regional Hospital. She’s also active in programs with her church, St. Joan of Arc.<br /> “I like to work with children and people who need real help,” Babione said, as well as with older people.<br /> She added that working within a club, “you can get so much more done and don’t have the attention on yourself.” But that doesn’t mean she’s escaped the spotlight: “People give me attention all the time. They spoil me,” Babione said.<br /> She also thinks it’s important for everybody to do something to help, pointing out that she’s not wealthy, nor do you have to be wealthy to give. “Somebody told me years ago: The small money we need to keep the toilet running. The big money we need for the buildings,” Babione said.<br />Babione’s late husband, Robert, was born in Lake Worth. Helen, who lived in Ohio, would travel to Lake Worth for part of the year to live with her brother, who had moved here for health reasons, and to waitress at a local eatery. There, she met Robert, who made deliveries to the restaurant. Helen came down permanently from Ohio in the late 1940s. “I feel more like a Florida person than an Ohio person,” she says. The couple spent some time in Washington when Robert was in the service, and in Texas where he went to school to become a funeral director. They moved back to Lake Worth, Robert started the funeral home in Boca Raton, and in 1960, they settled in Boca.<br /> They had seven children: Kathryn Babione Rogers, Phyllis Babione Haggerty and Ashley, Paul and Jean Babione. Two of their grown children, Robert Jr. and Mary Babione Veccia, have passed away. Helen has a total of 23 grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Her entire family, with the exception of one grandchild, lives in Palm Beach County.<br /> Today, Helen is a consultant at the funeral home and stops by often, especially to greet and grieve with people she knows and introduce them to the funeral director. “I still enjoy helping the people. I feel like it helps them, and if it helps them, I want to be there to do it.”<br /> Keeping busy at charitable work in addition to helping at the funeral home is a plus for Babione, as well as those she supports. “I’ve been very fortunate as far as I’m concerned. I really appreciate doing it, too. It keeps my mind going better. It keeps me happier to know different people,” she said.<br /> With the length of time she has been in Boca Raton, Babione mentions that she is “blessed to know a lot of different types of people.” <br />What she has also learned from meeting so many: “Everybody has a gift. No matter who they are, they have their own personal gift that I enjoy getting to know.”</p>
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<p style="text-align:center;"><strong>NOMINATE SOMEONE TO BE</strong> <br /><strong>A COASTAL STAR</strong> <br /><em>Send a note to news@thecoastalstar.com or call 337-1553.</em></p></div>Trio of ‘stars’ behind Women’s Circle fundraiserhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/trio-of-stars-behind-womens2009-12-31T16:46:15.000Z2009-12-31T16:46:15.000ZMary Kate Leminghttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/MaryKateLeming769<div>By C.B. Hanif
“The triumvirate,” is how an admiring colleague described them.
“They all work together so much that as far as the Women’s Circle is concerned, they’re kind of inseparable,” said fellow volunteer Mary Crawley.
<p style="text-align:left;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960288286,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
That would be the Women’s Circle, whose Circle of Hope dinner gala fundraiser, Feb. 8 at Benvenuto in Boynton Beach, will profit from the toil of many volunteers, not the least its co-hosting trio of Eileen Augustyn, Helen Babione and Peggy Martin.
The nonprofit organization provides educational and employment tools that let South County women break their cycle of poverty and help their families.
Board member and fundraiser Augustyn, of Gulf Stream, “puts a lot of hours into this,” said Crawley. “She’s always on the phone and doing a lot of face work. I don’t know how she has any free time to do any fun stuff.”
Though heavily invested in the Women’s Circle, Augustyn also has been a stalwart for the Bethesda Hospital Foundation and other efforts. She served as a trustee during the not-for-profit hospital’s recent $100 million fundraising drive. The founder of the foundation’s Magnolia Society contributes countless hours each year for the Women of Grace committee. In October, in recognition of her work, she was named one of Bethesda’s Women of Grace. Augustyn also worked closely with Caridad Ascensio in the 1990s as a board member in developing the Caridad Center health clinic for migrant farm workers and their families. Her volunteerism dates even beyond her 1980s public service in Illinois. “It was my parents, who by example, taught me the importance of giving voluntarily, sharing my time to help people,” Augustyn said.
Her gala co-chairs’ service is similar.
It was Babione, of Boca Raton, who introduced Augustyn to the Women’s Circle.
Martin, of Delray Dunes in Boynton, has worked with Augustyn on Caridad and Women of Grace, and for several years has co-chaired the circle’s fundraising event. That’s significant because the Women’s Circle, founded in 1999 and co-coordinated by Sisters Joan Carusillo and Lorraine Ryan, is solely dependant on grants and donations. In September, with a $100,000 interest-free loan from the Boynton Beach CRA, it purchased a duplex that doubles the size of the current cramped space it shares. The duplex next needs renovation into offices and classrooms. Enter the volunteering triumvirate. “I am always learning something new that enriches my life,” said Augustyn. “And you meet the nicest people!”
<i>Eileen Augustyn, Helen Babione and Peggy Martin were nominated to be Coastal Stars by a fellow volunteer, Mary Crawley.
For more information on the Circle of Hope fundraiser, contact 272-3965 or lcrcjam@aol.com.</i></div>