Mrs. Mary Welham Wurmstedt, a Jenkintown native and former owner of Helweg & Rowland Funeral Home in Jenkintown and Abington, passed away on Tuesday, March 4, of cardiac arrest at her home in Dallas. She was 91.

A graduate of Philadelphia High School For Girls, Mrs. Wurmstedt taught second-, fourth-, and sixth-grade students at Clara Barton Elementary School in Philadelphia in the 1950s. She went to the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania at night and later started working as a financial analyst at Chase Manhattan Bank, her obituary in The Philadelphia Inquirer said.

She met David Rockefeller, then chairman and CEO at Chase, while living and working in New York and worked on Richard Nixon’s unsuccessful 1960 presidential campaign.

After marrying Joseph Helweg Jr., she moved to Jenkintown, where he owned Helweg’s Funeral Service on Old York Road, and had a daughter, Diana, and a son, Joe. Mrs. Wurmstedt assumed ownership of Helweg Funeral Service following her husband’s death in 1985.

“It’s a people-oriented business, and she was good at helping support people,” her daughter said. “She always said funerals are for the living. She found her calling.”

She sold the funeral home in 2021.

She was also a fundraiser for the Women’s Board of Abington Memorial Hospital and active at Huntingdon Valley Country Club, St. John’s Episcopal Church, the Junior League of Philadelphia, Rotary Club of Jenkintown, and other groups.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education at Bucknell University in 1955.

Services were held March 29. Donations in her name may be made to the Abington Health Foundation, 1200 Old York Rd., Abington, Pa. 19001.

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