David Helmer was driving force behind Link museum

[NS Newsfeed]

Norfolk Southern executive David Helmer shared a passion for trains with his good friend O. Winston Link. The famed photographer often told Helmer he wanted a museum to house his photographs that glorified the age of steam engines.



Helmer, too, wanted that museum, and believed it belonged in Roanoke. He got civic leaders in Roanoke to board the train and led the efforts to persuade Link that it needed to be here.



"I don't think there'd be a Link museum without David Helmer," said Bev Fitzpatrick, executive director of the Virginia Museum of Transportation.



Helmer, 72, died Saturday in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he had traveled to root for the wrestling team of his beloved alma mater, Oklahoma State University. His son, Chris, said his father had a heart attack while parking at the hotel.



With his passing, nonprofits in Roanoke lost a well-connected and organized fundraiser and idea man.



"David never rested, didn't do anything halfway," said George Kegley, director of publications for the Historical Society of Western Virginia, which operates the O. Winston Link Museum. Helmer, a past president of the society, was still serving as a board member.



"He was tireless and passionate in his work for the railroad history," Kegley said.



Though it's no secret Helmer was a driving force behind the founding of the Link museum, he would have been the first to say he didn't do it alone, his son said. In all his endeavors with the transportation museum, the historical society, the Kiwanis Club of Roanoke and more, he preferred to work behind the scenes and let others have the credit.



An Oklahoma native, the child of German-Russian immigrants, Helmer went through Oklahoma State's ROTC program and enlisted in the Army after graduating. He was deployed to Vietnam in 1965 as part of a transportation unit.



He returned to Vietnam almost 40 years later and revisited the places where his unit traveled. In a 2009 presentation to the Kiwanis Club, he described encountering North Vietnamese soldiers. "I did the job the government asked me and so did they. How can you be angry?"



He retired from the service as a lieutenant colonel. He set out from Fort Eustis in Newport News for job interviews that awaited in Texas and Oklahoma, but his car broke down in Roanoke. On a whim, he applied at the Norfolk & Western headquarters.



"The rest is history," Chris Helmer said.



David Helmer worked his way up from clerical duties to director of the Norfolk Southern costs section, from which he retired about 15 years ago, his son said.



A rail buff since childhood, he applied his enthusiasm with martial precision to planning events for the Roanoke Transportation Museum in the 1970s and early 1980s. Among his triumphs is the establishment of an annual NASCAR Racing Weekend where museum visitors could meet top drivers.



He was so successful that he was asked to organize Roanoke's 1982 Centennial Parade, for which he recruited celebrities such as All-Star baseball player John Wesley "Boog" Powell and pro football player "Mean Joe" Greene. A Joe Kennedy column in the Roanoke Times affectionately nicknamed him "General Helmer."



Bill and Ellen Arnold, volunteers with the Link museum since before its 2004 opening, first met Helmer and his wife Grace through the Roanoke Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society. The Helmers introduced the Arnolds to Link, who in the early '80s was already a family friend.



As Link searched for a place for his museum, "David became very active toward fostering that," Bill Arnold said.



In 1999, Helmer initiated the conversation that led to the founding of the Link museum - literally rounding up Center in the Square president Jim Sears and then-Historical Society director Kent Chrisman during a gathering at Roanoke Mayor Ralph Smith's house and making the pitch.



As the wheels got rolling, Helmer turned to fundraising for the project, and more. Bill Arnold described learning that one of the antique gas pumps featured in one of Link's photos still existed. When he mentioned this to Helmer, his friend demanded, "Where? Where?"



"I told him where it was, and said, 'Now, go get it,'" Arnold said. Helmer did, and made arrangements to have it permanently installed in the museum.



The Link museum "was the love of his life," Bill Arnold said, "besides his family, of course."



Helmer is survived by his wife, Grace, his children, Delta and Chris, and three grandchildren.