Helen Elizabeth Johnson

Helen Elizabeth Johnson (age 89) died peacefully in her sleep, in the company of her loving family, on December 1st on the Johnson Family Farm in Westmond, Idaho. Helen was born Helen Olmstead on April, 9 1924, in Spokane, Washington, to Alice Hazel Olmstead. Due to her mother’s ill health, Helen spent many of her childhood summers with her maternal grandparents Nathanial and Maude (Phillips) Olmstead on a farm outside Curlew, WA, and her Grandmother Maude became a key role model and inspiration in her young life. In 1951 she would travel to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, to meet her father, Robert Orville (Bud Cherry). Following the death of Helen’s mother in 1934, Helen lived with her stepfather Carl Oberg in Spokane until 1939 when she moved to Curlew full-time. She graduated from Curlew High School in 1942 and the next morning caught the stage bus to bravely strike out on her own. She accepted a job in Seattle working on the assembly floor at Boeing Aircraft, and it was here that she caught the eye of a handsome young sheet-metal worker, Roy Johnson, at whom she playfully tossed a rivet! A few weeks later, on a date on a Puget Sound ferry, Roy proposed, and the two were married on August 18, 1942. In October 1943, Roy entered the Army Air Force and Helen returned to Spokane with the couple’s first infant son, Ronald. Roy was eventually stationed at Muroc Field (Edwards Air Force Base), California, where Helen joined him. Following the war, the couple moved to Kelso, WA, in 1946 and began working and saving for their dream of buying a farm on which to raise their family. In 1957, they found the perfect place in Westmond—eighty secluded acres of woods and pasture with a barn and house with a view of Butler Mountain—and moved there in 1959 with their four sons, Ronald, Lester, Steve, and Richard. In Westmond, Helen worked as a cook at Southside Elementary School from 1961 to 1967, at which time she enrolled at North Idaho Junior College. Having greatly enjoyed the children for whom she cooked at Southside, she decided to major in elementary education, and she graduated with her Bachelor’s degree in 1970 from Fresno State University in California where she consistently made the dean’s list. She returned to teach fourth grade at Southside Elementary until her retirement in 1974, after which she and Roy divided their time between the Johnson Family Farm and searching for warmer winter climates and sun in California, Washington, Arizona and Oregon. After sixty-two years of adoring marriage to Helen, Roy died in December, 2004. In 2005 Helen moved to Lilac Plaza senior-living apartments in Spokane, where she enjoyed making many friends. In September of 2013, she returned once more to the Johnson Family Farm in Westmond, where she lived out her days with the loving care and company of her son Steve and granddaughter Heidi. Her family remembers her with love as a believer in social justice, full of compassion for the underdog and those oppressed and overlooked by society. Sometimes, if a family member complained about not having things just right, she would ask them if they thought the homeless might not want to trade places. She was a great believer in the power of public education to transform lives, and she set an example of hard work at home, on farms, at school, and in jobs including waitressing, doing child care, motel cleaning, and cooking at a pizza factory. To the good fortune of Roy and their four boys, she loved homemade fudge and popcorn (buttered, when the budget allowed) which she sometimes served during Bonanza on Sunday TV night. She enjoyed the simple beauty of flowers and above all loved her family. She was preceded in death by husband Roy and daughter-in-law Sheila (MacLure). Her survivors include sons Ronald, Lester, Steve and Richard; daughters-in-law Linda, Carol Ann, and Mary, former daughter-in-law Marguerite VanderSloot; grandchildren and grandchildren-in-law Jonathan, Amy, Erik, Ann, Robert, Meenaxi, Dennis, Heidi, Roy, Amber, Jeremiah, and Jennifer; and great-grandchildren Amber, Ross, Ryan, Jordan, Leela, Stacia, Anya, Aeden, Shaila, Kira, Kyle, Marjorie, Payton, Devan, Genevieve and Rajan. A memorial service and internment at Westmond Cemetery beside her beloved Roy will be held in April. Those who wish to celebrate her life may do so with an act of generosity or kindness to anyone experiencing hard times.