Helen K. (Kelley) Kinsley

In remembrance of my ever loving grandmother. Helen Kinsley
From a very early age, I have wonderful memories of my grandmother. She always made it a point to make sure I did not leave her house hungry. We enjoyed over the years going out to breakfast and talking about life, family, history and some gossip on the side. She loved to have me sit and listen to Grampa's stories and would get a good laugh out of the parts that he would embellish. Helen taught me the value of hard work and how to make something last. I will miss you dearly and you will always be in my thoughts and prayers.
Your loving grandson Scott

My grandmother was amazing. I remember being a little girl going to grandma's house. I was dropped off early morning excited for a day with gram. A day with gram was many things hiding candy from grandpa, feeding raccoons, going to the bakery for a pink pig cupcake and spinning on the stools, some days we painted nails. I loved to pick out polish from her dresser. Gram had plastic pop beads that I turned into beautiful pearl necklaces. Spending the night was fun , her house on gov. Peck road had a room we slept in with a big bed and mini orange tree. I used to wonder how she could grow mini oranges inside. She would pick me special roses and I loved to go and see what color would be awaiting my arrival. She made many pairs of mittens that kept my hands warm through the winters in Vermont. Her memories will always be with me. She took care of her family and will forever be loved in my heart.

My Mother was the most selfless person I ever knew. She spent a lifetime focused on her home and family, always looking for ways to make the lives of her children and husband better. She dearly loved to cook and feed anyone and everyone who crossed her path.

I, like my Sister Debra, have a lifetime of memories to recall. The trips to camp were especially memorable and something we looked forward to each year, us three kids sandwiched into the backseat alongside a rabbit, a guinea pig and our rather large dog. All of the animals we ever owned were treated like royalty. My Mother would never have considered leaving them behind to be cared for by anyone else. It’s doubtful that any trip to camp was any vacation for Mom, but nevertheless she made it fun.

I can barely remember our year in Florida as I was only one or two years old, but the pictures from that time served as a visual time capsule of what I had missed. I was told that seeing snow falling on Panama City Beach that winter was something to behold. To this day I believe that experience has something to do with my dislike of winter and my love of old Florida.

I remember the two abandoned kittens that joined our household as a result of my Father’s trip to deer camp one year. My Mother was a push over for any animal in need, so they quickly became our new pets. My Mother had a little set of stairs built to the upper deck on our house so those kittens would have a means to escape any wild predators they might encounter. She delighted in seeing them quickly learn the new
drill. How they loved to sun themselves there in the winter without the need for wet paws.

Her talents as a seamstress were enviable. She made me more dresses than I can count, including my wedding dress. All I had to do was describe what I wanted, and it appeared, no pattern necessary.

Poor health in her later years really kept her from being the vital person she wanted to be. I take comfort in the belief that she is finally at peace. Her family is grateful for the lifetime of memories she left us with. She will be sorely missed.

Mom was devoted to her family and everything she did was in some way connected with making their life happy leaving us with lots of reasons to try and be like her in so many ways.
Some of my first memories were of living in Tallahassee across from the capitol building while my father was in graduate school. Mom had the three of us girls by that time and it must have been a handful in a small upstairs apartment. It snowed the winter we were there and we girls wanted to make a snowman on the lawn there. I don’t remember if any of us had mittens but I know I didn’t and mom walked us to a store to get some for me. I still remember my hands being so cold on the walk to the store and warm on the way back.
She was also a great seamstress and with great excitement that same year she made me a poodle skirt from felt . I was about five years old at the time and just dripping with anticipation of this wonderful creation that would flare and twirl. Her only mistake was to then decide to wash the skirt before I wore it and felt doesn’t take kindly to hot water and agitation. What came out I remember looked mostly like a spider web. It was gray, like a poodle, but that’s about all you could still tell of the skirt.
Her sewing machine was a Singer treadle that I also learned to sew on, starting out trying to make clothes for my Barbie doll. I remember she stayed up very late one Christmas Eve to make pajamas for my stuffed fox as I realized too late that I hadn’t come up with a gift for him. The machine at that time must have been in my bedroom as I remember the sound of the treadle and the comfort of knowing my Chipper was going to have a special gift from me in the morning.
We girls never lacked for things to do as she made sure we had plenty of board games and crafts. One summer it was paint by numbers, another it was crewel work paintings, many of which still hang in her house. We had an assortment of animals including a resident guinea pig with a hutch in the kitchen who would get up on a little wooden bed we made him, lay down and stretch out his legs for a nap. I’m sure many of mom’s salon clientele remember Toby very well as he had a disconcerting habit after his bedding was renewed of backing up to his screen walls and peeing, then rooting madly under his stairs until the new straw suited him.
Mom made sure we always had a vacation before school started and she packed up everything we needed including Toby and his big hutch to bring with us to a little camp on St. Albans Bay for a week each summer. If you have never been to camp on the lake you are missing an experience everyone should have. We girls loved the wooden bunks with curtains, the dock, and the old rowboat dad used to take us out fishing in (especially me as I had more patience). I remember collecting clam shells from under the dock, a wild storm one night that waved over the dock and allowed the sheepshead fish I had caught the day before to escape from the pail I had it in, and learning to like the crunch of fried perch tails. You never get over Lake Champlain once you’ve been in it or on it.
Of course we had a Lassie dog, well know as she made the rounds around the neighborhood for treats as many dogs did during those days. Lassie never at regular dog food, mom cooked her supper after she was done cooking ours. When dad and mom moved back to Jericho from Newport two black cats came with them; Pierre and Minoux.
In St. Albans, being too close to a busy road for dogs or cats, she had favorite chipmunks, a wild bunny that would appear now and then, and crows that she made treats for the last winter I was with her. She loved seeing the crows hop carefully towards a muffin, then jump back if it didn’t look quite right. They eventually, of course, ate anything she made, and one crow would station himself in the tree by the driveway and call the others when I put the scraps out. The crows were better entertainment for her, then pretty much confined to her chair by the window, than any other type of bird feeder would have been.
Flowers were her passion, one that I inherited, and she grew outstanding roses in Jericho, at one point having a long trench in the ground where she would carefully lay down her climbing rose and cover it so it would survive the winter. In St. Albans she started growing wonderful hybrid daylilies, many of which I have in my gardens today. She didn’t just want to keep this beauty to herself; she potted and sold plants for many years by her driveway meeting many folks along the way including her very special friends Eleanor Fish and her daughter Helen Hader from Maine who continued to come and visit her every year even after she stopped selling flowers.
Helen brought her mother to see mom this summer which was really the highlight of her year. Eleanor and mom would put their heads together as hearing was an issue, and you could see both of their faces just light up as they talked with each other.
Mom also had a wonderful family next door who kept a constant check on her, and were always ready and willing to help out in any way at any time. Mom was fiercely independent and didn’t like to depend on others, sometimes seeming overly wary around people at times but Maureen and Bernadette were so good hearted and compassionate that they overlooked her quirks and she came to love them as well as their boys who took care of her lawn and other little odd jobs for years and we are so grateful to them for this.
Mom accomplished things that nowadays seem to take more energy than most of us can muster; but she sacrificed gladly and I know given the chance she would do it all over again.

While always priding herself on being the perfect homemake and housewife, Helen was much more than just that. And beyond being a loving grandmother and an infectious spirit, she had a unique view and passion that she brought to the world. While her husband was notably the genealogist, I found that often, she too looked into history. But not the history of long off, the history of her life, of the things she had seen, of the places that she had visited. One of the ways that I will always remember her, is as a storyteller. As someone who in a quiet moment could spin a yarn so transfixing and magnificent it would hang in the air above the chairs for days, and hang in the hearts and heads of the listeners for ever. Not only was she always a great supporter of my desire to write, making a point to ask about it in every letter she sent or phone call that she made, but also allowing me to use her computer every time I visited. She took pride in the fact, that even if she couldn't use it or find them, that those pieces of my brain and my spirit lived inside that house. She was contented, and I think comforted, to have her memories around her. Even in her later years, the last time that I truly saw her, I remember taking her out for dinner at a small restaurant in St. Albans, and asking her quietly, nervously even, to simply tell me stories. What she remembered, what she half remembered, what had impacted her in any tiny way. And she was off. It was such a loss to see her leave this world, but I am so thankful for both the fact she got to leave remembering the beauty of her life, but also that she got to pass it forward and encourage so many others to find it in theirs.