Helen Abby Becker Silverstein Of Southampton Dies March 15

Helen Abby Becker Silverstein of Southampton and Brooklyn Heights, died on March 15, after a one-night stay at Calvary Hospital/New York Hospice, in the Bronx. She was 92. She had been in home hospice since early December.

She and her husband, Louis, bought a summer house in Shinnecock Hills in July 1958. They became well known in Southampton in the mid-1960s, after their son, Jamie, 8, was hit by a car near his Brooklyn home in May 1964 and severely brain damaged.

The Southampton community, especially members of the First Presbyterian Church, volunteered by the score to attempt to teach Jamie to crawl, and then perhaps recover other abilities, through a new approach to brain training called “patterning.”

The volunteer program coordinator for the Silverstein family was Sonny Stratford, who, at the time, lived with her husband, Bill, and their two sons, a stone’s throw from the Silverstein’s house on Highland Road. (She still lives in Southampton as does her son, Todd Stratford.)

Every day, throughout the summer of 1965 and 1966, around 25 people throughout the day, in teams of five or six, arrived at the Silverstein’s home to “pattern” Jamie — manipulate his head, arms and legs while he lay on a padded table — for five minutes to attempt to teach the child’s brain new patterns.

Although the Silversteins ran patterning programs in Brooklyn and Southampton for nearly two years, Jamie’s brain injury was too severe and he never recovered. His parents placed him in a nursing home for the remainder of his life. He died in February 1972 at the age of 16.

Born on April 20, 1927, to Robert and Bess Becker on the eve of the Great Depression, Ms. Silverstein grew up across from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and attended Erasmus High School and Brooklyn College. After graduation, she became a case worker for the city but soon switched to union organizing, working for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.

She met Lou, an up-and-coming art director, at the ILGWU training institute, where he was teaching a class in graphic communications. (Ms. Silverstein called it “sign painting.”)

They married in May 1953. Jamie was born in May 1955 and Anne was born in October 1957.

During the 1960s, after Jamie’s accident, Ms. Silverstein began assisting photographer Robert Frank in making his film, “Me and My Brother,” and ultimately became the producer and editor. The film premiered at the 1968 Venice Film Festival.

After a stint making TV commercials, which she hated, Ms. Silverstein became the community affairs director of the Manhattan Laboratory Museum in Hell’s Kitchen, which later became the Manhattan Children’s Museum.

In her later years, Ms. Silverstein was a columnist with The Earth Times, a newspaper that published during and at UN conferences around the world on sustainable development, women’s issues, the environment, children’s issues and immigration.

Mr. Silverstein retired in 1985 as the assistant managing editor of The New York Times and corporate art director for the New York Times Company. He died at the age of 92 on Dec. 1, 2011.

In addition to Anne, Ms. Silverstein is survived by her son-in-law, Dan Janison; and two grandsons, Robert Jamie Janison and James Nathaniel Janison.

Donations in her memory may be made to the Rogers Memorial Library, which she loved as much as any place on earth, according to her family.