Helen Philbrick died at 101 on Dec. 1. Her passing was marked by her friends, but her life, and her life in Duxbury, deserve exclamation points.

Helen Louise Porter married The Reverend John Philbrick in 1937. In 1939, he was named minister of St. John’s Episcopal Mission in Duxbury and of Trinity Church in Marshfield Hills. St. John’s served a largely summer population. In the winter, services were held upstairs in a small chapel, with only the heat of a pot-belly stove -- and no running water, summer or winter.

Roanridge’s mission was to prepare ministers to serve rural churches and missions, partly by educating them in farming and country ways. Roanridge practiced “biodynamic gardening,” a German method dating to the 19’th Century, which was a precursor of the American organic farming movement. The Philbricks were hooked. Returning to the simple earth became one of their passions for the rest of their lives.

Early in their time in Duxbury, through the auspices of Percy Walker -- Duxbury’s preeminent real estate man -- they purchased the 1772 Judah Delano house at 165 West St. (the original part of the house is behind the 1831 Frederick Peterson house -- a Greek Revival farmhouse -- which faces the street). They named it Faith Homestead. For nearly a quarter of a century after leaving St. John’s, they returned when they could from parishes they were serving in Ashland, Wilkinsonville and Groveland. When they could not, they rented the place.

In 1972, the Philbricks retired to Duxbury -- initially joining the choir of the Church of the Pilgrimage in Plymouth, rather than imposing themselves on Richard Anthony’s successor at St. John’s. They immersed themselves in Duxbury’s life and environment. Great admirers of Rachel Carson, they published their own book, “The Bug Book,” on the effect of aerial spraying. In 1978, they published the charming “Powder Point Priest Keeps Pigs,” recalling their affection for the pigs they had raised in the 1940’s. As liberal anti-Communists they took a great interest in the world and its people -- particularly in the 1970s in young people disaffected by the Vietnam War.

After Reverend Philbrick’s death Helen carried on their work without him, but by no means alone. At 95, in 2005, she published her memoir, “Journeys with a Real Jack in the Pulpit” -- a wonderful read; both it and “...Keeps Pigs” are available at Duxbury Free Library. She gave Faith Homestead to the Wildlands Trust of South Eastern Massachusetts, with the proviso that she continue to live there during her lifetime. She learned computers and continued her avid interest in everyone she encountered. As a nonagenarian, Helen Philbrick showed that passing fourscore and ten does not stop a person from learning, from teaching, from comforting, from affecting the world for good.

--D.A. Mittell, Jr.