Helen J. Harring

Visitation for Helen Jane Harring will be held on Friday, September 6, 2024, from 3:00 to 8:00 p.m. at the Ahlgrim Family Funeral Home, 201 N. Northwest Highway, Palatine. A short Visitation will be held Saturday, September 7, 2024, from 9:30 a.m. until the time of the Funeral Service at 10:15 a.m. at the First United Methodist Church of Palatine, 123 N. Plum Grove Rd., Palatine; with the Reverend Robert Sathuri officiating. Interment will follow in Evergreen Cemetery, Barrington.

Helen Jane Young was born July 4, 1926, in Detroit, Michigan, to Rose Mae (Watson) and Adrian J. Young. She passed away peacefully August 31, 2024, at the Westbrook Senior Living Facility in Streamwood, Illinois.

Helen was raised in Detroit, Michigan where she graduated from Cooley High. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in Elementary Education in 1948 where she was a member of the Sigma Kappa Sorority. Some of her sorority sisters became lifelong friends. She loved spending time at her family’s rustic cottage on Lower Straits Lake outside of Detroit.

Helen married her college sweetheart, Ronald James (Jim) Harring, in 1949 and they moved to the Chicagoland area.

She was deeply religious in her Christian faith. After moving to Inverness in 1967, Helen and Jim were active members of the First United Methodist Church of Palatine. She taught Sunday School for 25 years and belonged to several small groups (including the Frogs group that she helped found). Helen was a proud member of P.E.O. and belonged to many Bridge clubs from the 50’s to the 90’s. She enjoyed hosting monthly “movie nights” with friends and playing golf. Helen and Jim took many trips with their children and grandchildren, a tradition she continued after Jim’s passing.

Every year, on her Fourth of July birthday, she hosted a huge picnic at her Inverness home.

Helen was a loving mother and is survived by her five children; Michael (Lois), Paul (Rose), Kevin (Jan) Harring, Mary Kate (Dan) Thompson, AJ (Meghan) Harring; her eleven grandchildren, James (Erin Toaz), Matthew (Helen Miller), Megan Lang (Scott), Victoria, Michelle Schutt (Jonathan), Sean, Kate, Grace and Shannon Harring and Corrie and Kyle Thompson; and seven great-grandchildren, Caden and Alissa Lang, Jane and Dorothy Harring, Sofia, Charlotte, and Adriana Harring.

Helen was preceded in death by her husband, R. James Harring, her sister and brother-in-law, Mary Lou and David Bone and extended family members Ruth Skinner and Dorothy Watson. The family extends its sincere thanks to Helen’s loving caregivers, especially Gail Johnson and Janet Lane.

“This is a day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it!”

Memorials may be made to The First United Methodist Church of Palatine or to the Salvation Army.