By Lauren FitzPatrick
Staff writer
As a young woman, Helma Cornejo put her trust in love, and it changed the course of her life.
The German-born girl coming of age during World War II fell for a handsome American soldier named Pastor Cornejo while she was preparing to become a nurse.
She let love lead her to the United States, where she would win so many more hearts in Blue Island through her photography at the old Sun-Standard newspaper.
Mrs. Cornejo, known throughout Blue Island and Calumet Park for her beautiful photos, died Feb. 20 at age 77.
Born and raised in Rotherburg in southwestern Germany, Helma Fink was one of three children. She grew up between two World Wars and never got over her hatred of fireworks, which reminded her of bombs that fell during her childhood.
She was going to school to become a nurse when she met an American GI who ended up in Germany with the Army during the World War II.
It was love, plain and simple, between the 17-year-old girl and Pastor Cornejo, a dear man she affectionately called Joe.
Besides, her daughter Lorraine Sexton said, she didn’t have much of a stomach for blood.
At the end of his tour, Cornejo returned to the United States and began saving to pay for her passage.
He worked at the post office for a while, and used his GI Bill money to learn photography at a school in downtown Chicago.
After three long years of writing love letters, Mrs. Cornejo flew to New York and despite knowing little English made her way to the Cornejo home, where she would live with her new husband and his family, including his Mexican-born mother, who only spoke Spanish.
“She was 20 years old; she didn’t speak English,” Spencer said. As a result of that flight — when a German-speaking gentleman helped her make travel connections — she decided if ever she saw a traveler in distress,
she would stop and help, Spencer said.
The couple married within a month or so, and Cornejo began teaching his wife photography. The pair built a studio and darkroom in their home in Calumet Park and later in Midlothian, taking wedding photos and portraits, daughter Linda Cornejo said.
In the late 1950s, when her daughters were in school full time, Mrs. Cornejo went to the Blue Island Sun-Standard to ask for a job. She was a solid photographer who knew Blue Island and Calumet Park well. They hired her and sent her out on all kinds of assignments.
Among her favorites was photographing Bob Hope, who visited Blue Island in 1976 to head the bicentennial July 4th parade.
“She loved parades, but she didn’t like fireworks,” Spencer said. “They reminded her of bombs.”
Mrs. Cornejo also loved sports. “She really was a sports enthusiast,” Sexton said.
Her favorites: cross country running and wrestling, especially wrestling, her daughters said. She preferred individual sport to teams, although she shot photos of whatever matches her paper asked, Spencer said.
“She took the football pictures, the baseball pictures, the Little League pictures,” Spencer said.
“She was outgoing and sociable,” daughter Linda Cornejo said. Her sister added, “She was the picture lady, the photography lady. She had an incredible memory for details.”
Mrs. Cornejo took photos professionally for the next 50 years, developing and printing her own photos. She moved from the Sun-Standard to the Southtown Economist — the Daily Southtown’s predecessor — when it bought the smaller paper in the 1980s. She stayed on until retiring in the early 1990s.
“She had an interesting life, and she was a marvelous photographer,” Spencer said.
And so much of it began with love.
People at Mrs. Cornejos wake kept asking about the little box tied with ribbon lying with her, Spencer said. They were the love letters her husband of 45 years had written her. She had asked to be buried with them.
“They had quite a love affair,” Spencer said.
Mrs. Cornejo also is survived by daughters Linda Cornejo and Lorraine Sexton; grandchildren Michael DePolo, Robert DePolo, John Sexton and Stephanie Cornejo; and her brother Roland Fink.
Arrangements were by Krueger Funeral Home, (708) 388-1300.
