Thank you ever so much for coming here to help us pay respects to a lovely woman. Our Bishop served in the Special Forces in the Army and is a man of few words, so I'm going to elaborate just a little bit on the program and then we'll move ahead. First of all, the opening hymn, Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel is not normally sung at LDS funerals. That was Helen's request because one of the first hymns she heard when she was investigating the church was this hymn. And this is Helen: less talk and a little more action. This hymn is here at Helen's request as is the intermediate musical selection Amazing Grace. She loved that song.
We gave the children the option to speak and pay tribute to their mother and we are going in birth order. You will hear from Michael first and then Matt. You will not hear from Rebecca because being wise, she thought that she would share her talent musically. She will accompany Mandy Armstrong for their presentation, and then you will hear from Rachel. Vicki Carlson speaks as a friend, and then Brother Dunn will give us our thoughts and feeling about life and death and this great Plan of Salvation that allows us to come to earth. So with that, again thank you very much for coming here to be with Helen, to be with the family
Many people attend funerals because they know the deceased. I suspect there are few, if any, who are here just because you know Helen. You are here because you love her. It was very difficult, if not impossible to know her without loving her, as I am sure all of you can attest.
I want to tell you just a little of what I know about Helen. I hope I tell you something you did not know about her so you can appreciate her a little more.
Many people attend funerals because they know the deceased. I suspect there are few, if any, who are here just because you know Helen. You are here because you love her. It was very difficult, if not impossible to know her without loving her, as I am sure all of you can attest.
I want to tell you just a little of what I know about Helen. I hope I tell you something you did not know about her so you can appreciate her a little more.
She was born Helen Kent Gaspard, September 17, 1944, in Detroit Michigan to John Clark and Edna Kent Gaspard. Jack, as her father was known, and Edna met in San Francisco. He was a soldier and Edna worked on the post. Jack served in Europe and after WW II was over, they began their married life in Detroit. The marriage didn’t work and Edna took Helen to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where they lived with Edna’s parents, until Helen and I were married some 20 years later. Some of that time she was away at college, but basically that was her home.
Helen’s mom worked at several jobs to make ends meet and Helen spent most of her days alone in her grandparent’s home. Her grandparents were hard working Swedish immigrants who had raised their family of five and while they were kind to Helen and loved her, she longed for a family of her own complete with a father, mother, brothers and sisters. She wanted the type of family she saw in the homes of her aunts and uncles on both the Kent side of the family and Gaspard side. Helen told me she frequently cried herself to sleep at night worrying about what would happen to her if she lost her mother.
Helen’s mother wisely maintained close ties with Helen’s father’s family in Detroit. Helen spent a portion of most of her summers in Canada where the Gaspard family had a summer cottage. There she was one of 8 Gaspard cousins, all very close in age. She spoke endlessly about the fun it was to be at the cottage, playing with the cousins and being around her aunts and uncles. I actually thought she spent her entire summers at the cottage-she talked about it so much. I found out it was only two weeks, but it was such a big part of her life. Her seven cousins became the brothers and sisters she didn’t have and even today they are probably closer than most siblings. I think that out of the seven, six are here, coming from many different places.
The Kent aunts and uncles in Pittsburgh also provided Helen strong family value and support. She was partially adopted by her Aunt June who needed a “daughter” to balance her home of six boys. Her cousins Gayle, Lynn and Cheryl were like sisters and they spent their teenage years tormenting boys with their girlish flirtations. In fact, when Helen was in grade school, she contracted ringworm and had to have her head shaved as part of her treatment. During that school year, she chose to live with her aunt and uncle and her cousins Gayle and Lynn while her beautiful straight blonde hair grew in dark and naturally curly! There are many cousins on the Kent side here today. I don't have a number count. They are harder to keep track of.
The picture of Helen I hope you have in your mind is of a happy young girl who loved her extended family. Living alone with her grandparents and with her mom working much of the time, she could have been rebellious, resentful, or could have fallen victim to drugs, alcohol or other destructive behaviors. Instead, she chose to become a happy, well-adjusted, lovely woman who has had a positive influence, I would bet, on every single life in this congregation here today.
Her mom, who by the way is with us today, took Helen and a cousin on a road trip across America when she graduated from High School in 1962. You can imagine the reaction of this 17 year old romantic girl who longed for a family of her own when she visited Temple Square in Salt Lake City and learned of the Latter-Day-Saint doctrine of eternal marriage. Namely, that marriage covenants and family relationships extend beyond the grave into the eternities. She tucked that doctrine away in her mind without knowing at that point what a major influence it would play in her adult years.
Almost 4 years later, after Helen completed her Bachelors Degree in Home Economics at Muskingum College, here in Ohio and side stepping several offers of matrimony, Helen’s mother brought two Mormon missionaries home from a trolley stop to meet her daughter. I'm not sure what her motives were, but I know what the end result was. At that point in her life, Helen was faithless; even doubting the existence of God. After a year of teaching, reading and prayer, mostly prayer, Helen developed a strong faith in God and was baptized in November of 1966.
The Air Force assigned me to the University of Pittsburgh in the Spring of 1967. Helen and I met in September of that year at church. As I mentioned, Helen was easy to love and I had to stand in line for a date. Being patient, and after several dates, I got up enough courage to kiss her and was absolutely thrilled when she was kissing back! I thought maybe she liked me!
We were married in August of 1968. A month later we were married for eternity in the Salt Lake Temple on my way to Vietnam. While I was in Vietnam for that year, Helen went to live with my parents on a small farm in Vernal, Utah. Imagine the contrast in life for Helen going from Pittsburgh with trolleys, traffic and department stores to a town that, I think, at that time had one traffic light. It was a magnificent year for my parents who learned to love her like a daughter, and for Helen a marvelous year to understand farm life. My parents laughed when Helen realized that potatoes really did grow in the ground and that little boy animals lost their manhood soon after birth and that baby lambs had their long flowing tails removed at the same time. One of my favorite pictures, and we saw it last night on the screen at the funeral home, is Helen in her bib overalls, standing by the tractor. There is another one that we didn't see last night, that's my favorite of her riding the tractor with my dad.
Helen was the perfect Air Force wife. She loved the adventure of living in a new city, new country and experiencing a new culture. She loved the men and women in uniform and loved our flag. In Berlin, when the wall was still up, she loved to see the British, French and US flags flying together. I have seen her cry as the flag passed by in a parade. She loved our country. She would tear up at patriotic stories and music. We would both cry as we looked at the thousands of WW II grave markers in the US cemeteries in Europe. We knew, she knew, the price of freedom. Helen was a patriot.
We lived in over 20 houses and Helen made a home out of each house. She had such an eye for color and decorating. When we met, she had a closet of clothes that she had personally made and all her outfits had matching shoes and accessories. After we were married she used her skills to decorate our walls with baskets, pictures, and many unusual things that other people would ignore. In her last few years while working at the base consignment shop, she developed the merchandise displays each week. She loved piecing together colors and objects, and patrons told Helen they couldn’t wait to get to the Thrift Shop to see what she had done for the displays.
Helen loved to entertain in her home. She would have been perfectly happy to have guests in for dinner several times a week. She loved to cook and decorate her table. Helen knew how to make every guest feel special. I believe it is about 40 feet from our front door to the driveway. The average time for Helen to walk our guests out to their cars and say good-bye was about 45 minutes. She had a special quality of putting people at ease and making them smile. I have honestly seen her ride two floors in an elevator with complete strangers and have them smiling and laughing at something before they got off.
When our kids became teenagers we became a paper route family. We had as many as four separate routes at a time in 4 different cities. We learned a lot about each other delivering papers and about money management that shape our habits today. Helen was always an integral member of the team and in San Antonio, she was up at 1:30 AM each morning to get the papers so we could be on time with our delivery. My mom and dad thought that was weird, and I reminded them how many times over the years they got up at 3:00 to milk cows.
Helen is an incredibly talented, kind, lovely woman of deep faith who lived her dream to be part of a strong, unified, loving, eternal family. She wanted to be a mother and a wife. She wanted to be a homemaker. She wanted to use her creative talents to enrich and enhance her home. She was an excellent teacher and could have had a successful career had she chosen, but she chose to focus all her attention on being a wife, a mother and homemaker. The luckiest people in the world are the five of us who call her wife and mother. When we came home to a grand meal, sometimes even with a centerpiece, a nicely decorated home and clean clothes, Helen was not sacrificing a career to be a mom; she was fulfilling and living her dream of being a mom! Lucky for us!
I have included a copy of the Latter-Day Saint Family Proclamation on the back of your program to help you understand how we feel about families and what was at the core of Helen’s life. You can imagine the joy it was for Helen to meet her half-sister Vicki, when Helen was already a mother with two kids, and Vicki was entering college. So she did have family besides all these marvelous cousins I've been telling you about. Vicki is also here with us today.
As I reflect on my great fortune to be Helen’s husband, I am reminded of a very powerful line in the movie, Twin Towers. Helen and I were watching this movie together, it's about the attacks of 9/11. In it, Nicholas Gage is a fireman trapped in the rubble. The prospects are getting dim and he believes he will not be rescued. He is reminiscing about his lovely wife and children and while recounting what a magnificent person his wife is and he asks himself: “Did I love her enough?” I sometimes wonder if I loved Helen enough; I loved her and still do, but I hope I loved her the way she deserved. She was such a wonderful gift; her love; her friendship, her devotion.
I know that Helen has returned home to a loving Heavenly Father. I know that if I honor the covenants of marriage we made in the temple we will spend the eternities as husband and wife. This knowledge sustains my hope. Yes I hope I loved her enough. I hope that we all did is my prayer in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen.
Helen’s mom worked at several jobs to make ends meet and Helen spent most of her days alone in her grandparent’s home. Her grandparents were hard working Swedish immigrants who had raised their family of five and while they were kind to Helen and loved her, she longed for a family of her own complete with a father, mother, brothers and sisters. She wanted the type of family she saw in the homes of her aunts and uncles on both the Kent side of the family and Gaspard side. Helen told me she frequently cried herself to sleep at night worrying about what would happen to her if she lost her mother.
Helen’s mother wisely maintained close ties with Helen’s father’s family in Detroit. Helen spent a portion of most of her summers in Canada where the Gaspard family had a summer cottage. There she was one of 8 Gaspard cousins, all very close in age. She spoke endlessly about the fun it was to be at the cottage, playing with the cousins and being around her aunts and uncles. I actually thought she spent her entire summers at the cottage-she talked about it so much. I found out it was only two weeks, but it was such a big part of her life. Her seven cousins became the brothers and sisters she didn’t have and even today they are probably closer than most siblings. I think that out of the seven, six are here, coming from many different places.
The Kent aunts and uncles in Pittsburgh also provided Helen strong family value and support. She was partially adopted by her Aunt June who needed a “daughter” to balance her home of six boys. Her cousins Gayle, Lynn and Cheryl were like sisters and they spent their teenage years tormenting boys with their girlish flirtations. In fact, when Helen was in grade school, she contracted ringworm and had to have her head shaved as part of her treatment. During that school year, she chose to live with her aunt and uncle and her cousins Gayle and Lynn while her beautiful straight blonde hair grew in dark and naturally curly! There are many cousins on the Kent side here today. I don't have a number count. They are harder to keep track of.
The picture of Helen I hope you have in your mind is of a happy young girl who loved her extended family. Living alone with her grandparents and with her mom working much of the time, she could have been rebellious, resentful, or could have fallen victim to drugs, alcohol or other destructive behaviors. Instead, she chose to become a happy, well-adjusted, lovely woman who has had a positive influence, I would bet, on every single life in this congregation here today.
Her mom, who by the way is with us today, took Helen and a cousin on a road trip across America when she graduated from High School in 1962. You can imagine the reaction of this 17 year old romantic girl who longed for a family of her own when she visited Temple Square in Salt Lake City and learned of the Latter-Day-Saint doctrine of eternal marriage. Namely, that marriage covenants and family relationships extend beyond the grave into the eternities. She tucked that doctrine away in her mind without knowing at that point what a major influence it would play in her adult years.
Almost 4 years later, after Helen completed her Bachelors Degree in Home Economics at Muskingum College, here in Ohio and side stepping several offers of matrimony, Helen’s mother brought two Mormon missionaries home from a trolley stop to meet her daughter. I'm not sure what her motives were, but I know what the end result was. At that point in her life, Helen was faithless; even doubting the existence of God. After a year of teaching, reading and prayer, mostly prayer, Helen developed a strong faith in God and was baptized in November of 1966.
The Air Force assigned me to the University of Pittsburgh in the Spring of 1967. Helen and I met in September of that year at church. As I mentioned, Helen was easy to love and I had to stand in line for a date. Being patient, and after several dates, I got up enough courage to kiss her and was absolutely thrilled when she was kissing back! I thought maybe she liked me!
We were married in August of 1968. A month later we were married for eternity in the Salt Lake Temple on my way to Vietnam. While I was in Vietnam for that year, Helen went to live with my parents on a small farm in Vernal, Utah. Imagine the contrast in life for Helen going from Pittsburgh with trolleys, traffic and department stores to a town that, I think, at that time had one traffic light. It was a magnificent year for my parents who learned to love her like a daughter, and for Helen a marvelous year to understand farm life. My parents laughed when Helen realized that potatoes really did grow in the ground and that little boy animals lost their manhood soon after birth and that baby lambs had their long flowing tails removed at the same time. One of my favorite pictures, and we saw it last night on the screen at the funeral home, is Helen in her bib overalls, standing by the tractor. There is another one that we didn't see last night, that's my favorite of her riding the tractor with my dad.
Helen was the perfect Air Force wife. She loved the adventure of living in a new city, new country and experiencing a new culture. She loved the men and women in uniform and loved our flag. In Berlin, when the wall was still up, she loved to see the British, French and US flags flying together. I have seen her cry as the flag passed by in a parade. She loved our country. She would tear up at patriotic stories and music. We would both cry as we looked at the thousands of WW II grave markers in the US cemeteries in Europe. We knew, she knew, the price of freedom. Helen was a patriot.
We lived in over 20 houses and Helen made a home out of each house. She had such an eye for color and decorating. When we met, she had a closet of clothes that she had personally made and all her outfits had matching shoes and accessories. After we were married she used her skills to decorate our walls with baskets, pictures, and many unusual things that other people would ignore. In her last few years while working at the base consignment shop, she developed the merchandise displays each week. She loved piecing together colors and objects, and patrons told Helen they couldn’t wait to get to the Thrift Shop to see what she had done for the displays.
Helen loved to entertain in her home. She would have been perfectly happy to have guests in for dinner several times a week. She loved to cook and decorate her table. Helen knew how to make every guest feel special. I believe it is about 40 feet from our front door to the driveway. The average time for Helen to walk our guests out to their cars and say good-bye was about 45 minutes. She had a special quality of putting people at ease and making them smile. I have honestly seen her ride two floors in an elevator with complete strangers and have them smiling and laughing at something before they got off.
When our kids became teenagers we became a paper route family. We had as many as four separate routes at a time in 4 different cities. We learned a lot about each other delivering papers and about money management that shape our habits today. Helen was always an integral member of the team and in San Antonio, she was up at 1:30 AM each morning to get the papers so we could be on time with our delivery. My mom and dad thought that was weird, and I reminded them how many times over the years they got up at 3:00 to milk cows.
Helen is an incredibly talented, kind, lovely woman of deep faith who lived her dream to be part of a strong, unified, loving, eternal family. She wanted to be a mother and a wife. She wanted to be a homemaker. She wanted to use her creative talents to enrich and enhance her home. She was an excellent teacher and could have had a successful career had she chosen, but she chose to focus all her attention on being a wife, a mother and homemaker. The luckiest people in the world are the five of us who call her wife and mother. When we came home to a grand meal, sometimes even with a centerpiece, a nicely decorated home and clean clothes, Helen was not sacrificing a career to be a mom; she was fulfilling and living her dream of being a mom! Lucky for us!
I have included a copy of the Latter-Day Saint Family Proclamation on the back of your program to help you understand how we feel about families and what was at the core of Helen’s life. You can imagine the joy it was for Helen to meet her half-sister Vicki, when Helen was already a mother with two kids, and Vicki was entering college. So she did have family besides all these marvelous cousins I've been telling you about. Vicki is also here with us today.
As I reflect on my great fortune to be Helen’s husband, I am reminded of a very powerful line in the movie, Twin Towers. Helen and I were watching this movie together, it's about the attacks of 9/11. In it, Nicholas Gage is a fireman trapped in the rubble. The prospects are getting dim and he believes he will not be rescued. He is reminiscing about his lovely wife and children and while recounting what a magnificent person his wife is and he asks himself: “Did I love her enough?” I sometimes wonder if I loved Helen enough; I loved her and still do, but I hope I loved her the way she deserved. She was such a wonderful gift; her love; her friendship, her devotion.
I know that Helen has returned home to a loving Heavenly Father. I know that if I honor the covenants of marriage we made in the temple we will spend the eternities as husband and wife. This knowledge sustains my hope. Yes I hope I loved her enough. I hope that we all did is my prayer in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen.
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