Helen Louise Schmidt Haunstrup, who for almost 50 years provided warmth, nourishment, and “preternatural calm” at Napi’s Restaurant, died peacefully in her sleep on Jan. 29 near Louisville, Ky. after a 10-year battle with Alzheimer’s disease. She was 84.
Known as the unflappable and big-hearted other half of the cantankerous Anton “Napi” Van Dereck Haunstrup, Helen was a teacher, restaurateur, animal lover, adventurer, and friend to many in Provincetown. She will be remembered for her love of nature, generosity, and wry sense of humor.
Helen was born on July 15, 1940 in Smithtown, N.Y. to a family of sailors. Her father, Dr. Wolf Dietrich Schmidt, was an emigré from Hamburg, Germany. Her mother, Ruth, was a true New Englander with a web of family spread throughout the Northeast dating back to the 1600s. Helen’s ties to Provincetown began at an early age; her family vacationed here every year, along with winter adventures in Vieques, Puerto Rico.
Helen’s cousin Karen Corson sailed down to Provincetown from Maine with her family to visit, and the two forged a bond based on their love of books. “We were always reading,” Corson said. “I had gotten into Russian literature at one point, and she had already done it. She told me, ‘What you really need to do is read Shakespeare.’ ” The family enjoyed frequent hikes across the dunes to the back shore to go swimming and play with plovers, Corson said.
It was during the summer of 1955 that Helen met Napi at a sailing race. The two became fast friends, though Helen had her eyes set on Napi in other ways. She went on to receive a degree in education from Pembroke College in Providence, now part of Brown University. She taught for several years in Manhattan, visiting Provincetown in the summers.
Helen and Napi went sailing and skin diving in those summers with then-police chief Jimmy Meads. “Napi always said she was a much better sailor than him,” said Helen’s friend Jackie Kelly. Helen was also an avid wind board surfer.
At that time, Napi was married to Jane Alexander. That marriage didn’t last long.
“The day Napi got divorced, Helen knocked on my mom’s door and asked if Napi was there, and that was that,” said Judy Saffron, Napi’s half-sister. “Napi was the one person she wanted in life.”
The two married in New York City Hall in 1964. That’s when the real adventures began.
Napi and Helen went on sailing excursions in the Caribbean and skiing trips in the winter. The two visited Helen’s family in Hamburg. After several years with New York as their home base, they moved to Provincetown full-time.
Their first years here were a shuffle. They lived with Napi’s mom, who had bought a house on Alden Street in 1960. They had a spell on Tasha Hill, Saffron said. Artist and longtime friend Bill Evaul remembers visiting the couple at the Sea Urchin in the East End, where they would host lively Wednesday night potlucks.
“It was an open-door invite,” Evaul said. “They had a handful of friends and anyone who happened to be strolling by and needed a meal. We would hang around and talk or jam and play guitars and sing.”
In 1973, Helen and Napi bought the property at 7 Freeman St. that would become Napi’s Restaurant. It then consisted of a series of moldering garages with an apartment building on top. The couple first ran an antiques business there, selling old wares they had accumulated in their travels.
Helen took a job as a reading specialist at the Provincetown Veterans Memorial Elementary School. According to her colleague Liz Adler, Helen was one of the most popular teachers in the school. “She had a lovely way about her and a wonderful relationship with the townie kids,” Adler said. “She was a really kind-hearted and competent teacher.”
Napi and Helen opened the doors of their restaurant in 1975 after two hard years renovating the building with help from their artist friends. The couple turned the place into a favored year-round spot, decorated iconically by friends’ art and their own collection.
With works commissioned from local artists Jackson Lambert, Frank Milby, and Conrad Malicoat, the restaurant was as much a museum as it was a place to dine. Less acknowledged, however, were the contributions Helen provided to the exhibition.
“Her whole family were gifted artists,” said Corson, her cousin. “A lot of family heirlooms were incorporated into the decor of Napi’s.”
Evaul, who was part of the crew that built the restaurant, said the early days of labor were often punctuated by Napi’s shouts and commands. But Helen was always a source of calm. “She was always so even-keeled and steady,” Evaul said. “She was the oil on the water for the storms that would blow through.”
Helen poured her love into the restaurant and kept her cool through it all. While Napi may have been the restaurant’s name and face, Helen was everything else. “Instead of calling it Napi’s, we started calling it Saint Helen’s,” Evaul said.
“She was so proud of how successful Napi’s was,” Corson said. “That was the highlight of her life.”
During annual vacations to visit Saffron in Maine, Helen spent her leisure time on reconnaissance for the restaurant. “She was always collecting menus to bring back,” Saffron said. “She would open her shirt after our meal and there would be a menu inside. It always made me laugh because she never changed the damn menu.”
Helen was indeed protective of the menu, according to Fernando Sosa, a cook who worked for Helen for 20 years. “At first she was strict with me,” Sosa said. “But as soon as I showed her I was a good cook, she started to trust me more. I eventually became her right-hand man.”
Helen was the invisible hand that guided Napi’s famous generosity in housing the restaurant’s workers and others in town who sought shelter. The two accumulated several dozen units of housing over the years and kept them affordable even as the price of real estate climbed. Helen and Napi helped many Jamaican immigrants settle in town, assisting some in applying for green cards. The same was true for Sosa, whose family was living in Mexico.
“When I asked Helen if I could bring my wife and daughter to Provincetown, she found me a place on Bradford Street,” Sosa said, referring to the hamlet of timeworn cottages lovingly referred to as “Napiville.”
“She always tried to help people,” Sosa said. “She was kind to everybody.”
In the late 2010s, Helen started showing signs of dementia. After Napi died on Christmas Day in 2019, those whom Helen had helped came to help her.
“We took her for walks, and she was always happy to have our company,” Sosa said. Helen was especially fond of feeding the seagulls at Herring Cove and going on walks through the Beech Forest. She befriended a bunny in the Provincetown Cemetery. She was deeply rooted in Provincetown. “She knew all the back roads, all the herring runs,” Kelly said.
Even through the dark moments of her dementia, Helen maintained a sense of humor. “She had this big belly laugh, and she could always laugh at herself,” said Saffron, who had come down from Maine to care for her sister-in-law. Helen’s warmth never faded, and those who visited the restaurant said she always had a smile on her face, greeting her customers with a hug and genuine excitement for their company, said her friend Jane Paradise.
After Napi’s death, the couple’s longtime financial adviser Berni McEneaney won legal conservatorship over Helen in Barnstable Probate Court. Helen disappeared from town, and many of her closest friends and family said they could not get in touch with her. The Independent reported that Helen was being cared for by private caretakers in Airbnb units in Florida and North Carolina as her longtime tenants in Napiville faced threats of eviction.
According to an obituary in the Cape Cod Times, Helen was in Louisville at the time of her death. Calls to McEneaney for information about a memorial service and burial went unanswered.
Rich Delaney, executive director of the Center for Coastal Studies, said the center will hold a memorial service for Helen in May. Helen and Napi were supporters of the marine research center as well as the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, both of which are the expected beneficiaries of the sprawling Van Dereck estate, which includes the now-shuttered Napi’s Restaurant.
Helen is survived by her sister-in-law, Judy Saffron, cousins Karen Corson, Erick Weiss, and Dorrip Tompkins, and brother-in-law, Moe Van Dereck. Tributes to Helen can be posted at chapmanfuneral.com.
Helen leaves a much-changed Provincetown indelibly imprinted by her kindness and calm spirit. “Everyone had the same impression of her,” said Kelly. “She was just a good person.”
