Helene Langtry

Hélène Carter-Griswold Langtry, 87, the former Assistant Director of the Honors Tutorial College at Ohio University in Athens, OH from 1979-1990, died on January 11, 2024 at her retirement community in in Mitchellville, MD. “Laney”, as she was known her entire life, was married to OU Physics Professor David Onley during the 30 years she lived in Athens (1965-1995).

Hélène Griswold Carter was born in New York, NY on March 3, 1936 to Edward Lawrence Carter and Elizabeth Griswold Tenney, both of Williamstown, MA. Her first home was Washington D.C. where her father worked as a reporter for the Washington Daily News. Her early childhood was marked by frequent moves and the interruption of World War II, when the family lived in Berkeley, CA while her father worked for the Red Cross in the Pacific. After the war, the family lived in Darien CT until her mother became ill and moved back to Williamstown; from 1947-1950 Laney and her younger sister, Louisa, lived in Alexandria VA and attended St. Agnes School while her father completed his divinity degree and was ordained an Episcopal priest at Virginia Theological Seminary. Her father’s first position took Laney back to Williamstown. She attended three high schools – Williamstown High School, Northfield School for Girls (Gill MA) and University High School (Los Angeles CA), the last when her father became head of Episcopal campus ministry at the University of California Los Angeles. She later enrolled at UCLA, and during her sophomore year met David Onley, a graduate of Oxford University (England) who had begun a graduate program in physics at UCLA. The two were married in the summer of 1957 and a few months later moved to Oxford where David completed his doctorate. During her time in England, Laney took her first professional position as secretary for Dr. Sidney Truelove, a clinical researcher in gastroenterology. For years afterwards, she kept in touch with Dr. Truelove, an employer for whom she had deep admiration, and the two kept in contact for years through letters. In a job recommendation for Laney, Dr. Truelove wrote she was “overqualified” for her position, “always discreet in confidential matters” and that her “best quality is her exercise of good judgment.”

Laney moved to Durham NC in 1960 after David was appointed an assistant professor at Duke University. She took a job at the university’s medical center as a secretary and was a full-time student at Duke from 1963-64. The move from the relative tranquility of an old university town in central England to a southern U.S. state in which racial segregation was enforced (not at Duke University itself) was a shock to the young couple, and it was during her time in North Carolina that a lifelong intellectual interest in civil rights turned into a passion. Among her most vivid memories of her time in North Carolina was attending a speech by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at a high school in Rocky Mount, NC, where Dr. King first used the refrain “I have a dream.” In 1965, Laney moved to Athens OH with her husband soon after the birth of their first child; a second child, a daughter, came along in 1966.

Laney’s years in Athens were driven by her civic-minded outlook, love of cooking and entertaining and focus on her family. While raising two children, she dove into local politics and various causes. She served as the membership and program chairs of the Athens County League of Women Voters; precinct committee chair for the local Democratic Party; and as a member of the Athens City Community Relations Commission, which investigated and promoted resolution of complaints under the city’s anti-discrimination ordinance in the areas of employment, housing and public accommodations. While on the Commission, Laney advocated to expand the ordinance to protect gays and lesbians. She also volunteered as a librarian for her children’s elementary school and served on the parents’ advisory councils of the Athens Middle School and Athens High School. Along with other faculty spouses, she organized a citizens’ “study committee” for higher education to address the poor support for public colleges and universities by the state legislature. In 1975, the group presented a study of state funding of higher education at the Ohio League of Women Voters annual convention. The report noted Ohio ranked 46th in the country in terms of per capital spending for post-secondary education and urged increased resources for the state’s “future well-being – for research, industrial growth, tax support, and political leadership.” During her time in Athens, Laney also completed her long-delayed bachelor’s degree, graduating in the honors program at OU in 1978, during which time she was employed as a teaching assistant in the English Department. She received her master’s degree in linguistics in 1984.

In 1979, Laney was named Assistant Director of the Honors Tutorial College, a position she held for the next eleven years. One of her key initiatives at HTC was recruitment, and she redesigned the college’s publications to emphasize the college’s unique tutorial system and promote its core values, such as cultivating independent thinking and “freedom from conventional academic structure.” But Laney’s most satisfying work and cherished moments as HTC’s assistant director was engaging with the students themselves, many of whom would recall years after their graduation her kind words of encouragement, thoughtfulness and willingness to assist them in any way she could. She retired from HTC in 1991 and by the mid-1990s was living full-time in Columbus, OH. She was divorced in 1996. In 2003, she married a dear friend from her teenage years in Los Angeles, Bertrand (“Andy”) Langtry, and she moved to be with her new husband at his home in Walnut Creek, CA. Andy died tragically of a heart attack during a trip to Australia just a few years later.

A talented poet from childhood, Laney penned a moving poem on Andy’s death, reflecting on his love of trains.

“End of the Line” read in part:

With a clarity honed by time,

the white-haired passenger

senses he won’t step off this train

when it pulls into his station tonight.

… he knows he has come to the end of the line.

For a while he smiles to himself

as all the great rides he has had

crowd his mind at quickening speed

and enter a soul of railroad love.

In 2014, Laney made her final move, to a retirement community in Prince George’s County, MD, in the DC metro area. She enjoyed her final years writing letters to friends and family the world over and passing on her love of Scrabble and cooking skills to her granddaughter.

Laney is survived by her son, Douglas Onley, of Arlington, VA; daughter Kate Onley of Newfield, NY; daughter-in-law Kameran and granddaughter Sydney, both of Arlington, VA; nieces Heather Sander-Heinz of San Diego, CA, Jessica Gilleran of Santa Rosa CA, and Clara Sander-McDonald of Bayside CA; and numerous grandnieces and a grandnephew. She is also survived by a few beloved cousins she didn’t manage to outlive. Besides her parents she is preceded in death by her sister, Louisa (“Lulu”) Carter, and her beloved dogs Percy, Nutmeg and Mocha.