Helen Annette DeCoursey Ruysser died peacefully on July 3 with her family at her bedside. She was eighty-eight. Born September 21, 1921 to Frank and Catherine DeCoursey, Helen was the fourth child of a Kansas City, Kansas dairy family that would eventually grow to nine. A strong devotion to her Catholic faith and a loyalty to her family marked her life throughout.
Helen attended St. Mary’s Grade School, Bishop Ward High School and St. Mary’s College in Leavenworth, before graduating from Fontbonne College in St. Louis with a degree in home economics in 1943. After college she worked for her father in Oklahoma City where the family owned a dairy. In 1951 she moved back to Kansas City and started work in the office of the Panhandle Eastern Company in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. She often recalled taking the street car between Kansas City’s two downtowns with great fondness. In 1953 she began dating the love of her life, Bernard Joseph Ruysser. On May 8, 1954 they married and began a lifetime of love, devotion and companionship.
After settling down, Helen’s vocation in life became her family and raising her four children. She discovered her two “avocations” to be cooking and travel. These always involved her family and were her ways of bringing everyone together in meaningful and memorable ways. Great home cooking was a staple almost every day in her home. Cookbooks lined several bookshelves. Her travels included annual family trips to Colorado, where her father was born. In later years she spent winters in La Quinta, California. She traveled internationally as well, having visited Europe at least a half dozen times. Other trips took her to Mexico, Brazil, China, Japan, Hong Kong and the Holy Land. Her Catholic faith led her back multiple times to shrines dedicated to the Blessed Mother in Medjugorje, Fatima, Lourdes and Guadalupe.
In addition to cooking and travel, Helen was an avid sports fan. Although she was not herself athletic by nature, she enjoyed watching all four of her children participate in tennis, figure skating, ice hockey, football and basketball, often driving them around the Midwest so they could compete in weekend tournaments. She was a faithful and lifelong Kansas City Chiefs fan who for most of four decades rarely missed a Chiefs home game until two years ago. And while she always wore red on Sundays in the fall, her Saturdays were usually green, as she loved to watch Notre Dame football, a passion passed along to her from her father. In the winter, she enjoyed watching KU basketball games on television in the company of her family.
Helen will be particularly missed for her deep devotion to her husband and children, especially in moments of need or crisis when she was always steadfast and sure. That steady-headedness in the face of crisis manifested itself on a December day in 1960 in an extraordinary way when the family home in Fairway caught fire. She suffered burns on her face and hands as she first retrieved her three-year-old son Joe, and then handed her 3-week-old daughter Kathleen through the window to a man who, fortuitously, happened to be selling firewood in the neighborhood. Helen spent the next three weeks in the hospital. Her grace under pressure will always be gratefully remembered.
Helen was a member of the St. Agnes Catholic Church and it’s Altar Society, the Rockhurst University Library Guild and the Mothers’ Clubs of Loretto Academy, Rockhurst, Sion, and Pembroke-Hill. She was a member of Mission Hills Country Club, the Carriage Club, and La Quinta Country Club.
Helen and her family are deeply grateful for the assistance and support provided by Jesse, Gwen, Hamel, Tammy, Tiffany, Joanne, Roger, Lynn and Dathne, as well as Dr. Malizewski and his nurse Margaret.
Survivors include her husband Bernard Ruysser; daughter Rita McMahon and husband Terry, their three children Terry, Jr., Molly and Megan; daughter Kathleen Ruysser; sons Joseph and Bernard, Jr.; and sister, Theresa Foley. She is preceded in death by her parents; her brothers Frank and Joe; and sisters Rita DeCoursey, Mary Martin, Loretta Foster, Lorraine DeCoursey, and Jean Morrisey.
The Funeral Liturgy will be 11 a.m. Wendesday, July 7 at St. Agnes Catholic church, 5250 Mission Rd., Roeland Park, KS. Burial in Mt. Olivet Cemetery. Friends may call from 9:30-11 a.m. Wednesday at the Church where the Rosary will be recited at 9:30 a.m. In lieu of flowers the family suggests memorial contributions to St. Agnes Catholic Church, The Sisters of Charity, Leavenworth, KS or the charity of the donor’s choice. |
