Helen Reichert

Helen Reichert died of natural causes on September 25, 2011, in her Park Avenue apartment in New York City at the age of 109. Olive Villaluna, her caretaker for more than 11 years, said that Reichert died "as she had wanted to, comfortably in her chair with a smile." She was survived by her two centenarian brothers, Irving and Peter, aged 105 and 101, respectively, at the time of her death, as well as many nieces and nephews. She rewrote her will under undue influence and disinherited many of her devoted family members.

In 1939, fourteen years after graduating from Cornell University, Reichert married cardiologist Dr. Philip Reichert, M.D. (Weill Cornell Medical College '23). Her husband was a founding member, trustee, and governor of The American College of Cardiology (founded in 1949), and served as its executive director from 1952–1962. Much of his rare diagnostic medical equipment and personal archives (correspondence, publications, notebooks, biographical information, minutes and transactions of the Board of Trustees of the American College of Cardiology, research, and other miscellaneous literature) were donated by his wife to Weill Cornell and are on permanent display in the college's faculty room. Dr. Reichert died on March 19, 1985 at the age of 87. The couple had no children.

In 1951, she hosted the award-winning TV talk show, FYI: The Helen Faith Keane Show, airing on New York City's Channel 5. The show resulted from Reichert's dissatisfaction with a male commentator from a fashion show broadcast over the DuMont network who she believed was "uninformed and condescending on the topic." She telephoned the company and was told that if she felt she could do a better job, she should come down to the station and try it herself. She agreed. Over lunch, the producer, Keith Thomas, offered her a show.

In 1951, her show was awarded the McCall Golden Mike Award for "Women in Radio and Television". According to the description on the cover of the program of the award ceremony, "The McCall's Awards to Women in Radio and Television […] are the only awards given exclusively to women Broadcasters and Executives for public service accomplishments in the communications field. Judged solely on evidence submitted by the contestants, [the award ...] set a publishing precedent. McCall's is the only magazine with a national circulation which has ever paid tribute to the public service record of any group in radio and television."

In 1947, Reichert began her thirty-year-long teaching career at The Graduate School of Retailing at New York University, where she taught "Fashion Co-ordination" and a self-created course called "Costume History." She has been credited with co-founding the Round Table of Fashion Executives in 1949. As a result of the growing Fashion Group International, it became increasingly difficult to network with other women in the industry. In addition, for six years, she worked as a copywriter for Bloomingdale's, ultimately rising to the position of Fashion Coordinator. She later transferred to Montgomery Ward, a mail-order catalog and retail company, and worked as a fashion coordinator.

In 1931, Reichert earned a master's degree in psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University.

In 1925, Reichert graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in English from the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University. She experienced anti-Semitism in Ithaca as a Cornell student and had to change her name from Kahn to Keane due to Collegetown realtors refusing to rent an apartment to a Jewish woman. During her undergraduate career, she lived in Risley Hall on East Hill. According to her caretaker Olive Villaluna, Reichert worked in the cafeteria because "she was ashamed of asking her parents for money to buy cigarettes." She also participated in the women's crew team and is, according to IvyLeagueSports.com, "arguably the program's most well-known alumna."

Because Helen Reichert and her siblings were all centenarians (her younger sister, Leonore Kahn Reichart, who was born May 25, 1903, died on February 18, 2005, at the age of 101, researchers have been studying them to see if longevity is correlated to genetics. Geneticist Nir Barzilai, a researcher who studied the biology of aging for over a decade, included the Kahn siblings and other Ashkenazi Jews in his research. He asked the pool about the details of their living habits: nutrition, alcohol consumption, smoking, physical activity, sleep, education, status, and spirituality. Barzilai and the team of researchers at Einstein's Institute for Aging Research discovered three genes common to the centenarians that may be the key to their long life. The first is a gene that increases the amount of HDL (HDL cholesterol) to two to three times higher than average, which Barzilai believes is part of the reason for the siblings' mental acuity at an old age. The second is a gene that slows metabolism as a result of a mildly underactive thyroid gland. The last is a mutation in axis, a human growth hormone that could possibly protect against age-related diseases, such as cancer.

Helen Reichert (November 11, 1901 – September 25, 2011) was an American talk show personality, New York University professor, founder of The Round Table of Fashion Executives, and the oldest living alumnus of Cornell University at the time of her death at age 109, just seven weeks before she would have become a supercentenarian.

Helen Faith Kahn was born on November 11, 1901 in the Lower East Side, Manhattan to Polish Jewish immigrants. As a young girl, she participated in the Girl Scouts of the United States of America (GSUSA) and had the distinction of being a member of the first Girl Scout Troop to sell World War I war bonds.