Helen McIntyre Dies at 75
Barnard College Trustee Emerita, Philanthropist and Advocate for Youth

Helen P. McIntyre, past vice chairman of the Barnard College Board of Trustees and chair of the Long Island Community Foundation, died Friday, Sept. 27, at the age of 75. The cause was cancer.

During 24 years as a Barnard trustee, McIntyre focused on development and fund-raising. McIntyre chaired the Barnard Campaign, the College’s first nationwide capital campaign, which raised more than $20 million for Barnard in the early 1980s. She was president of the Alumnae Association, chairwoman of the Barnard National Centennial Committee, which raised funds for the College in the late 1980s, and served on the Trustee Committee on Barnard-Columbia Relations.

From 1984 to 1998, McIntyre served as chairman of the Long Island Community Foundation and was credited with transforming the organization, once an outpost of the New York Community Trust, into a major philanthropic force of its own.

Suzy Sonnenberg, the foundation director, said under McIntyre’s stewardship the foundation went from making grants of $25,000 a year, with assets of $800,000, to a foundation with assets of $50 million that gives away $10 million each year.

Born on November 19, 1926, Helen Pond grew up in New York City and Glen Cove on Long Island. She graduated from Nightingale-Bamford, and then attended Barnard, where she was president of the freshman class and president of the student body during her senior year. She graduated in 1948.

Beginning in 1965, she petitioned the Huntington town board to create the Community Development for Youth Project, which she directed. It eventually became the Huntington Youth Bureau, and she served as its first board chairman from 1968 to 1974.

"There wouldn’t have been Community Development for Youth without Helen," said Paul Lowery, former Huntington Youth Bureau director. "She became an advocate in [Suffolk County] for local youth boards as a viable part of local government and how they should advocate for kids."

McIntyre served as chairman of the Suffolk County Youth Bureau’s Comprehensive Planning Committee, which foreshadowed the creation of youth bureaus in other Suffolk towns. Her focus then turned to adolescent pregnancy. She served between 1984 to 1990 as the first president of Suffolk Network on Adolescent Pregnancy, which sought to prevent teenage pregnancy. In its first year of operations, 1985, the county had 4,179 pregnancies to young women ages 10-19. By 2000, that number had fallen to 1,911.

McIntyre is survived by her husband, Randall P. McIntyre, of Oyster Bay, N.Y; her daughter, Virginia McIntyre of Concord, Ma.; and sons Mark P. McIntyre of Brooklyn and Archie McIntyre of Winchester, Ma. A service will be held Oct 5 at 12:30 P.M. at St. John’s Church, Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.