Doris Helsel

Doris Jean Mathias Helsel was born to Mildred (Eperson) and Raleigh Mathias in Akron, Ohio on 12/28/1927. Her mother was a former school teacher, and her father was a buyer for the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in Akron.. She had two older sisters, Henrietta ("Hank") and Geraldine ("Gerry"). Doris graduated from the University of Akron, then known as Akron University, with a degree in sociology in 1949. While in college, Doris developed her great interest in the dramatic arts, and while in college she organized, acted in, and produced a number of campus theatrical productions through her sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma. After briefly working as a social worker in Akron following graduation from college, Doris Mathias was accepted to the social work masters program at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. In early 1951, while waiting to matriculate at Case Western later in the year, Doris wrote to her older sister, Hank, and mentioned that she was planning to go on a blind date with an Akron native who had recently graduated from Yale University, and, also, that she did not consider herself to be someone who would ever marry. On the blind date, Doris met Dale Helsel, and both parties agreed it was a matter of love at first sight. The couple married approximately six months later and they were happily married for nearly 63 years. Doris worked and put Dale through graduate school at the University of California at Berkeley. The couple went on to have three children, David Helsel, a psychiatrist; Bruce Helsel, a banker; and Ann Helsel Furek, an art teacher. Eventually, Doris and her husband, Dale, settled in the northeastern Ohio city of Painesville, Ohio where Dale was appointed as the City Manager. In 1964 she was tapped by Director Larry Peerce to play the role of the silent witness and racist wife of the minister who married the biracial protagonists in the internationally acclaimed film, One Potato, Two Potato, which was to be filmed in Painesville. Her performance earned a positive review in Time Magazine in 1964. The review referenced the concise effectiveness of her role in the film's interracial wedding scene, where Doris - a social liberal in real life - dramatically served to represent the anti-miscegenation bigotry of circa 1964 white America. For her services she was paid $8. For a number of years, Doris served as an instructor in early childhood development at Lake Erie College in Painesville. Later in life, after raising her three children, Doris and her husband Dale Helsel traveled extensively to Europe and Southeast Asia as part of Dale's work with the United States' State Department. The couple eventually retired and returned to Akron, and then to Hudson, Ohio. After a full and happy life, Doris died peacefully of heart disease in Akron on 6/30/2014. She was survived by her husband, Dale Helsel, her three children, and four grandchildren. At her request, some of her ashes were sprinkled in Lake Erie, near to the site of her honeymoon. Dale died nearly three years later in 2017.