Helen G. McMahon

WOLFEBORO - Helen G. (Mahoney) McMahon, 92, formerly of Cambridge and Marshfield, Mass., died July 17, 2013. Born and raised in Brockton, Mass., she graduated from Cambridge City Hospital School of Nursing in 1942, the year she met the love of her life, George McMahon. They married the next year. Her nursing career included stints at Mass. General Hospital, and several years as an industrial nurse for B.F. Goodrich, Watertown, Mass. When she was 50 she went back to school at Northeastern University and earned accreditation as a pediatric nurse practitioner, paving the way for the work she loved best of all, school nurse at two Boston high schools, the Jeremiah Burke, and Dorchester High, from which she retired in 1982. For the next 18 years, she and her husband spent winters in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where they socialized with many of their friends from Cambridge and the South Shore, and spent summers in Marshfield. A year after her husband died, she relocated to the Wolfeboro area where two of her three children lived. Travel and hospitality were among her greatest delights and she was a fabulous cook. When her children were young, she frequently scheduled ‘mini-vacations’ for the family, long weekends in New York City, or Washington, DC. For years, she would host a Thanksgiving extravaganza of turkey and prime ribs of beef, serving a dozen or so family members, including her mother and her mother’s sisters, all Irish immigrants who lived into their 90s. She celebrated her 80th birthday by taking a trip to Paris with her son, Will. Helen McMahon had a passion for life and she pursued it with vigor and determination. Family members include a daughter, Catherine E. McMahon and her husband Statton Rice of Wolfeboro, N.H.; a son, George McMahon, Jr. and his wife, Patricia McMahon of Big Flats, N.Y.; and three grandchildren, Matthew E. McMahon of New York City, Lee A. McMahon of Alexandria, Va., and Elizabeth M. Rice and her husband Estebins Lopez of Wolfeboro, three nieces and two nephews. She was predeceased by her husband in 1999, and by her son, William McMahon of Moultonborough, in 2007. A funeral mass is set for Monday, Aug. 5, 2013, at 2 p.m., at St. Katharine Drexel Church, Alton. Burial next to her husband will follow at Massachusetts National Cemetery, Bourne, Mass., at a later date.