Helen Smith

HELEN VIRGINIA JENKINS SMITH

Cotter

Helen Virginia Jenkins Smith died Saturday, June 3, 2017, at the Eastern Star Masonic Home in Boone, where she had lived since 2000.

She was born Aug. 13, 1914, in Louisa Country, Iowa, to John and Elsie Getts Jenkins on a farm southeast of Cotter, purchased by her grandparents, Richard and Catherine Rees Jenkins.

Helen entered the first grade in the new building of the Cotter Consolidated School and must have ridden to school in the horse-drawn bus. There were eight students in her class. Most students sang in the chorus, acted in the plays and starred on the basketball team. Helen played violin, sang in quartets and participated in the youth group of the Cotter Presbyterian Church. She led the horse to raise the fork-of-hay into the barn and showed her 4-H shorthorn calf at the Louisa County Fair.

She learned to sew from her mother, beginning with doll clothes. The selection of fabric and pattern/design for her own clothes and those of her daughters satisfied her artistic inclinations.

In retirement, her medium would be oil, creating paintings of a girl on a hay stack, the backyard at night or still life paintings of household items and blossoms.

She learned to play solitaire and rummy with her sisters and enjoyed the competition of Rook, 500, and pitch from teen years and beyond ... always accompanied with popcorn and fudge. From her 40s until her eyesight failed, she was part of several bridge groups.

Helen was preceded in death by her husband, Gerald Smith; her son, Gordon Smith; and her siblings, Mary Ehrhardt, Harriet Newman, Marie Wagenknecht, Marjorie Woolsey, Richard Jenkins and Charles Jenkins.

Memorials may be sent to Friends of the Library, Sarah Willeford, director, Iowa Department for the Blind, 524 Fourth St., Des Moines, IA 50309-2364.