Helen Lorraine Kiesling

Obituary for Helen L. Kiesling August 14, 1922 to November 23, 2011

This cannot be a death tale. It could only be a love story.

Helen was next to the caboose in a train of six children (four girls, two boys) born in Spokane, Washington. As the youngest of her sisters, she wore hand-me-downs, including holey shoes that she learned to stuff with newspapers during Spokane winters. This was the depth of the Great Depression. Those threadbare clothes fit less and less well for a young lady who quickly grew to six feet tall in early high school. The resultant ungainliness reduced the number of dates and dances, but the gawky teen turned campus beauty queen after she’d enrolled at Northern Montana College in Havre, MT.

It wasn’t long before she was courted by and fell in love with Rob Kiesling, son of a Great Northern Railroad engineer. It wasn’t long after that that Rob was drafted into World War II and had to give up his acceptance into dental school at Northwestern University to join the Allied invasion of Europe.

Rob came back from WWII totally blind and with only the outer two fingers remaining on his right hand. Yet the quality of their love trumped these debilitating handicaps, fears of employability, family rearing and a host of other unknowns. They were married March 1, 1945 and she bore the first of five children in Palo Alto, California where Rob was undergoing two years of reconstructive surgery.

The young couple then returned to Havre where Helen worked as a staff nurse at the hospital. In addition, she helped Rob manage a newsstand, in the Havre post office, that the local service clubs (Kiwanis, Lions, and Rotarians) built for the returning Veteran Another three boys took their first baby breaths as Montana High-Liners, and a few years later they were blessed with the birth of their only daughter.

But, after fifteen years surviving on a modest disabled veteran’s pension, supplemented with newsstand income, they knew they had to make changes if they were to realize their dream of college educations for their brood. They shared an intense belief that higher education was both the path out of poverty and the key to careers of good, purposeful work. So Helen accepted a scholarship offer to earn a Masters Degree in Nursing Education at MSU in Bozeman, on the condition that she become a teacher of nurses. Her first assignment was at Eastern Montana College in Billings. After two years the University system, in recognition of her talents and organizational skills, sent her to Northern Montana College to establish an Associate Degree Nursing Program.

Helen’s ‘professional job description’ expanded quickly. She was soon appointed to the State Board of Nursing and also worked on writing exams for the National Nursing Practice Board. She was up to it because her ‘life’s job description’ already had forged her into a can-do woman: bearing and rearing five kids, chief of grocery shopping and meals, chauffeuring, head bread-winner, disabled-husband caretaker, family bookkeeper, faithful church member (Methodist), community service volunteer, caretaker of her father and mother-in-law until their respective deaths, and logistics planner for the numerous moves the family made from Havre to Bozeman to Billings and back to Havre. This is not an exhaustive list, but it would be exhausting for anybody to see the list of her labors.

Helen and Rob had to exercise considerable determination and discipline to accomplish all they did. Sometimes the order they sought for family temporarily disintegrated given the varying growth rates and personality developments among their kids.
There were no blueprints or manuals. Throughout all the various learn-as-you-go trials in life, they became wise enough to mix encouragement with discipline, they inculcated good reading and study habits, they urged involvement…. full participation. At the base of all this wisdom was an abiding love for each other, their children, and their communities.

With the kids out of the nest, Helen eventually retired from teaching. She and Rob spent their earlier retirement years traveling with friends to places they’d always dreamed about—–Africa, China, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe.

Advancing age steered them to Helena to be nearer four of their five children. Rob passed away in early 2008, and Helen thereafter began gently withdrawing from her known world to the point of passing at mid-day on November 23, her daughter comforting her to the end.

As for that mélange of kids, they are still out there, and each, in their own way, recognizable reflections of their unusual parents.
In birth order they are:
Steve (MBA, University of Chicago), retired and living in Arizona;
Bob (Chris), (MS, University of Montana), working on conservation projects in the Northern Rockies;
Roger (Linda), (DDS, University of Washington) practicing family dentistry in Helena with,
David (Michele), (DDS, UCLA) practicing family dentistry with Roger in Helena for the past 32 years;
Carol Schweitzer (Lenny), (BS in Nursing), working at Helena Indian Alliance, soon to be part of the
nursing staff at the V.A. hospital in Helena.

In addition to her five children, Helen showered grace, love and wisdom onto her thirteen grandchildren and five great grandchildren until her passing.

The children invite anyone interested to attend a memorial service for Helen on Friday, December 2, 2011 from 11:00 AM with a reception to following at the Anderson Stevenson Wilke funeral home on 3750 North Montana Avenue, Helena.

The family thinks there could be no more appropriate memorial than contributions to:
The Helen Kiesling Nursing Endowment
MSU Northern Foundation, Tax ID: 81-0375335
P.O. Box 1691
Havre, MT 59501

Who knows… with good luck, strong work ethics, and a little financial assistance, there might be a nascent Florence Nightingale or Helen Kiesling ready to step into such ruby nursing slippers.

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