Couple’s Legacy Lives on Through Campership Fund
For 40 years, Robert and Helen Harmony worked as production workers, he at Dayton Rubber and she at General Motors. As Robert said in a 1994 Dayton Foundation article, "The two of us started with nothing." In retirement, they looked to what would happen in the years to come. They wanted their decades of labor to help give children in need opportunities they didn't have and to do something important so that their labor would have a deeper, lasting meaning.
In 1993, they opened the Robert and Helen Harmony Fund for Needy Children, a Field-of-Interest Fund through The Dayton Foundation, to give area young people the chance to go to camp. For the Harmonys, camp was something they could only dream about as children, since older family members had to work to help with the household bills.
Helen Harmony was one of nine children of immigrant parents who traveled to the United States from their native Romania. At age 12, she quit Girl Scouts to go to work in the field, picking berries. When she was 14, her mother died, so she left school to take care of her siblings, eventually going to night school to make up what she had missed.
Later, while clerking in a dime store, Helen heard about production openings at Frigidaire (later General Motors). Determined to get a job there to earn a better living, she was turned down at first because she was too small for the heavy work. She wouldn't take no for an answer, however, and she was finally hired.
Robert Harmony graduated from high school in 1932, during the Great Depression. With his father laid off from work, he helped his family any way he could.
"We used to pray for snow during the winter," Robert said, because snow meant work. "We'd walk for a mile to make a quarter shoveling snow."
He caddied at three local golf courses seven days a week and cleaned up in "a beer joint" by night.
"Helen and I knew early on that if we wanted to eat, we had to save our money,” Robert said. ''We were brought up that you're on your own, and what you've done is on your own.”
Although that is how the Harmonys lived their lives, they wanted for other children to have what they didn't – a chance to enjoy their childhood.
While exploring their options, the Harmonys asked their lawyer how they could leave what money they had left "to something that will help little kids." Their lawyer talked to them about The Dayton Foundation and a legacy they could create that would last beyond their lifetimes.
"A kid - he can't help himself," Robert said at the time. "We just wanted to help someone."
Although Robert and Helen have since passed away, their legacy lives on. Through their Dayton Foundation fund, more than $1.3 million has been awarded to resident and health-related camps to date, providing over 13,000 children with an opportunity to go to camp and enjoy their childhood.
“I like making new friends with kids that are different from me,” said Emily, a longtime camper at Camp Joy, who was able to attend thanks to a grant from the Harmonys’ fund. “Camp has helped me to learn how to work with others and to treat everyone the same. I wish all kids could go to camp.”