Dynamic and compassionate couple supported Long Island behind the scenes.
Helen Pond McIntyre (1926-2002)
Randall Pomeroy McIntyre (1924-2008)
In December 2002, The New York Times ran a selection of stories about Long Islanders who’d changed lives, including Helen McIntyre, who led The New York Community Trust’s Long Island division for 14 years. The story noted that Helen “had a way of looking people in the eye and talking to them about a cause. Whether or not they had intended to make a donation, (she) walked away with a check.”
In 1980, when Helen joined The Trust’s Long Island advisory board, the foundation was giving away $25,000 a year in grants to local nonprofits. She chaired the board from 1984 to 1998, and two years after she stepped down, it handed out $10 million in grants. “There’s no question that the momentum created under Helen’s leadership carried us through,” said Suzy Sonenberg, former executive director of our Long Island divison. And every time she exceeded her term limit as chairperson, rules were changed so she could stay.
Helen’s husband, Randall, was equally driven and community minded. His children said he looked at life as one big adventure. An advertising executive and private pilot for nearly 60 years, he also served as chairman of the board of trustees of Adelphi University and as Adelphi’s acting president in 1971-1972, while the board searched for a new leader.
During his brief but busy presidency, Adelphi appointed five new board members, including the university’s first Black trustee and two recent graduates who had campaigned for a greater student role in policymaking. “We need an input of young thinking to keep in touch with what’s going on,” he said in a Newsday interview. He also established “Adelphi-on-Wheels,” the first commuter classroom in the country. During the morning and evening rush hours, Adelphi business instructors taught hour-long classes in a specially equipped train car on the Long Island Rail Road’s Port Jefferson line. More than 1,000 students graduated from the program, which ended in the early 1990s.
To thank him for his many years of service, Adelphi presented Randall with an honorary doctorate at its May 1972 commencement. During the same ceremony, George H. W. Bush, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.
Together, Helen and Randall were one of Long Island’s behind-the-scenes power couples.
Helen Josephine Pond was born November 19, 1926, to Warren B. Pond and the former Helen Schneiwind. Helen Josephine was only seven when her mother died after a long illness, and she was raised by her grandparents in Glen Cove and her father in Manhattan. Helen attended the Nightingale-Bamford prep school in Manhattan and graduated from Barnard College in 1948. She married Randall a year later.
Randall was born July 13, 1924, in Dix Hills to Otto and Virginia McIntyre. Otto founded O. E. McIntyre Inc., a marketing company in Westbury that analyzed consumers’ purchasing power and buying habits for direct-mail advertisers. In the mid-1960s, the company had 750 employees and turned out an average of 10 million labels and direct-mail ads a year.
Randall studied at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, then Yale University, where he graduated in 1947. During World War II, he joined the Army Air Forces as a navigator and became an avid aviation buff, flying small planes and gliders until he was 80.
After soaring to 28,000 feet above Mount Washington and gliding 311 miles on a single flight, Randall earned the Diamond Badge of the Soaring Society of America. His daughter, Virginia, recalled “flying from one Mayan ruin to another” during a trip to Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula in the 1970s.
“He was an amazing father for a daughter to have,” Virginia said in a Newsday story about her dad. “He always saw a woman as a full equal. And he always saw people’s potential and encouraged them, especially if it was in an unorthodox direction.”
After the war, Randall, along with his brother, Angus, started McIntyre Aviation, a Cessna dealership at Long Island MacArthur Airport. They chartered flights, offered flying lessons, and maintained small planes. Around the same time, Randall joined O. E. McIntyre, and took over as president in 1961, when his father retired. Later, he was president of McIntyre & Dodd Marketing in Montreal and Toronto, Canada, as well as president of the Business Mail Foundation.
When her three children were off to school in the late 1960s, Helen “felt she had time to spare and wanted to help people,” her husband recalled. She founded the Huntington Youth Board and served as its chairperson from 1968 to 1974. She then helped other Suffolk County communities start youth boards of their own. Later, she became the first president of the Suffolk Network on Adolescent Pregnancy before joining The Trust’s Long Island advisory board.
Helen McIntyre died September 27, 2002. She was 75. In a tribute to her in The New York Times, The Trust’s Long Island board and staff wrote: “Her dedicated and constructive leadership, her extraordinary but gentle strength, unwavering integrity, and powerful intelligence made Long Island a better place and will continue to be an inspiration. She will be deeply missed by all who had the joy and privilege of working with her.”
In 2007, Randall P. McIntyre published his memoirs, “80 Years on Long Island: Stories of My Life.” He died the following January at age 83.
Helen and Randall McIntyre established a fund for The Trust’s Long Island grantmaking that has supported the Peconic Land Trust, the Suffolk Community Council, and other nonprofits advancing education and other causes.