Helen, also called Geraldine, was born to James Lee and Maude Spears Hughes January 14, 1923 on a farm near Naples, Oklahoma. In 1925 her father took the family back to north of Arkansas City, Kansas on the Walnut River where she lived until graduating from Ark City High School. She moved to Wichita, met, John Ellis Gillespie, an aircraft builder for Culver Aircraft. They married in Ohio, moved to Colorado Springs, then Wichita, then Denver, then Gahanna, Appleton, and Blacklick, Ohio, then back to Wichita where her two youngest children were born. In 1952 she began building wiring for the Boeing B47 and then the B52. Doctors told her family she probably would never come out of a coma in 1954 from a terrible car accident. She did, working the next year on her feet as a fry cook at Smitherman's Restaurant in Augusta, Kansas.
Later she worked for St. Francis Hospital School of Nursing in Wichita, then moved to Salt Lake City and worked as an electronic assembler for a missile company. In the 1970s she was working at the University of Wisconsin (Milwaukee) Book Store, Milwaukee County Hospital, then in the 1990s she was supervisor over the Milwaukee County Social Service computer room (writing checks for those on welfare). She had been a farm worker, student, waitress, clerk, bookkeeper, cable assembler, hospital clerk, computer supervisor, nurse training helper, secretary, medical clinic worker. After retiring in 1998 she moved to Raymore, Missouri to be nearer her children.
She was an avid reader with 20 or more magazines and books coming each month and dozens of catalogs. She wrote letters to relatives every month for most of her life, traveled to Alaska, England, and Italy to be with family. She made clothes for her children, knitted, made ceramic dolls, canned and strangled chickens for food, hoed, and planted gardens all her life, and looked in on the sick and needy.
She was 96 year old when she died and lived her life her way. She renewed her driver's license when she was 96.
She was always helping other people, baking for them, a strong family person for all relatives, and a very social person. We are sure that in her first day in Heaven she will be trying to meet everyone, introducing herself saying, "Hi, I'm Helen." That is the way she met everyone. In December 1992 she wrote, "You know in 1954 when we were in the car wreck it worried me so that I could never repay people (so many strangers) for what they did for us. Jane Elder, my teacher at church, told me, You don't pay them back - you help someone else that needs a hand another day. She was a member of the Catholic Church and leaves a family of Christian children and grandchildren imbued with the same philosophy of life.
She leaves son LaRoux (Karen) Gillespie, Andover, KS, David (Helen) Gillespie, Sedalia, MO, and Jacqueline Koreen, Mesa, AZ, 13 grandchildren, and some 37 great-grandchildren, and1 great-great-grandchildren.
Christian services will be held 12:00 p.m. Wednesday, June 12, 2019 at Cullen Funeral Home, Raymore Missouri with visitation from 11-12 p.m. Graveside service will be held 12:00 p.m. Thursday, June 13, 2019 at Parker Cemetery in rural Arkansas City, Kansas.
