Obituary of Helga Dickau

Helga Dickau, 85, of Simsbury, CT was called to her eternal home Monday, passing peacefully in her sleep after a brief battle with cancer.

Helga was born in the village of Gross Kaerthen, county of Bartenstein, East Prussia in 1936.  Her family fled the advance of the Red Army during WWII and settled in Nordholz in western Germany.  She learned English in high school.  With ambitions of becoming an embassy translator, she then went to business college in Hamburg before spending a year working in England to improve her English.

An invitation from her Nordholz neighbor, and future husband, Ewald brought Helga to the United States in 1958.  They married in 1961 and had two sons.  She worked for several different firms in secretarial and administrative assistant capacities, eventually doing the office management and bookkeeping for her husband’s adhesives dispensing and curing technology business.

Helga’s three passions were her Christian faith, gardening, and baking.  She was very active in her church, had a house and yard full of flourishing plants, and was famous among relatives and friends for her seven-layer birthday cakes and Mississippi Mud pie.

Helga is survived by her husband Ewald, her sons Marty (Ellen) and Perry (Katrine), her grandsons Erich and Bergen, her sister Anita, sister-in-law Sheren and her children Tracey (Ryan) and Dan, brother-in-law and sister-in-law Leonard and Jutta and their children Alexander and Sebastian, and her sister Christa’s children Axel and Andreas.

A Celebration of Life service will be held Friday, March 18 at 10:00 a.m. at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, 39 Prospect St., New Hartford, followed by a light luncheon reception.  A private burial service will be held in Glastonbury Friday afternoon.  The family requests in lieu of flowers, contributions be made to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, 1 Billy Graham Parkway, Charlotte, NC 28201 (https://billygraham.org) or to Hands of Grace, P.O. Box 145, 8 Wickett Street, Pine Meadow, CT 06061 (http://www.handsofgracect.org). For online condolences, please visit www.mulryanfh.com.