Helen Bigham, labor leader, advocate for needy families

Helen Jenkins Bigham was a groundbreaker, in her 50s and again in her 70s.

The second time it was at the People's Emergency Center in West Philadelphia, which helps families that often "are headed by single young mothers who have never lived on their own."

"They typically read at a sixth grade level or lower," the center's Web site states, "and have little or no work experience."

In a eulogy last Monday for Mrs. Bigham, PEC president Gloria Guard said, "Our ability to have touched thousands of lives never would have happened without her."

On Dec. 22, Mrs. Bigham, 94, died of abdominal cancer at Lankenau Hospital in Wynnewood. She lived in the Mantua neighborhood.

Her work with the emergency center was a second career.

While a cook in the 1960s at what is now Strawberry Mansion High School, Mrs. Bigham organized Local 634 of the School Cafeteria Workers Union, which represented 1,000 members.

"She was the first female African American president of a union in Pennsylvania," Henry Nicholas said last week. Nicholas, board president of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees and its District 1199C in Philadelphia, said he held both offices in the 1960s and was a colleague of Mrs. Bigham's when she became her union's first president in 1968.

Mrs. Bigham retired from school work when she became the union president, a full-time office from which she retired in 1980.

But, her daughter Babs said, that did not stop her.

"My mother was driving and going to exercise classes when she was 90," her daughter said.

In the 1980s, Mrs. Bigham learned of the work of the People's Emergency Center, now at 3902 Spring Garden St. but housed from 1972 to 1990 at Asbury Methodist Church on Chestnut Street near 33d Street.

Mrs. Bigham was on the agency's board from 1985 to 2002, including a stint as president from 1986 to 1990, and was president of its community-development corporation for four years in the 1990s.

In her eulogy, Guard said Mrs. Bigham had been significant in turning the center "into a professional agency with sound business practices, responsive neighborhood development, and high-quality client services."

The agency now serves about 400 women and children a year, Guard said.

While leading her union in the 1970s, Mrs. Bigham was a member of the board of directors of the local Negro Trade Union Leadership Congress. Her daughter said that meant "helping youth become skilled in trades" so they could qualify for union membership.

In that decade, Mrs. Bigham was also a director of the local Jewish Labor Congress.

Born in Garnett, S.C., she graduated from Penn Normal Boarding School in St. Helena Island, S.C.

While working as a cook before organizing her union, her daughter said, Mrs. Bigham spent summers managing the kitchen at a YMCA summer camp in Downingtown.

A member of Reeve Memorial United Presbyterian Church in West Philadelphia, Mrs. Bigham in the 1990s served a one-year term on the Session, the governing body of the church.

Besides daughter Babs, Mrs. Bigham is survived by son Herman L. Jr., daughter Kathleen Braxton, a brother, and two grandchildren. Her husband, Herman L. Sr., died in 1986.

A funeral service was held Tuesday.