BUCKSPORT – Helen Marie Tapley, 89, went home to Heaven on March 1, 2005, having succumbed to complications of pneumonia at a Penobscot nursing facility. Helen was born Jan. 19, 1916, in Big Timber, Mont., to Chester Burton Patterson of Waldo, Maine and Clara (Lemieux) Patterson of Orono, Maine. She was two when the family moved from Montana to Fairfield, a town in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley of California where she was raised and educated. She graduated from San Francisco State College, taught school near Fairfield, married, worked in a machine shop during World War II, divorced, assisted in the Pasadena Public Library, married; then moved with her husband to Rochester, New York in 1958. It was in Rochester where she saw her need to have a spiritual birth, as Jesus directs in John 3:5, 6, 7, thereby she came to know the peace that comes with being forgiven and saved from hell. In Rochester, she gave her life to Christ and was used in Bible Club Movement work teaching children. During most of the 10 years, the Tapleys’ lived in Rochester, Helen supervised the infants’ department of the J.C. Penney Co. After her husband’s retirement in 1968 the couple moved to the J. Tapley homestead in West Brooksville, where she worked with Child Evangelism and Bible Club Movement. In 1970 she became the first teacher to teach in the newly opened Evangel Baptist Academy of Bucksport where she taught for 26 and a half years, which were the “happiest years of her life”. Three years after her husband, Emery’s homegoing in 1973 she moved to Bucksport where she resided until December 2003. After retirement from teaching, she tutored and encouraged missionaries in near and far away places through email. Helen was the last of her immediate family. Three sisters went on ahead, Eva Meyn of Orono, Patricia Barone of Fairfax, Calif., and Grace Patterson of Fairfield, Calif. She leaves a stepdaughter, Helen Wick and her husband, of Balboa Island, Calif.; four stepgrandchildren and their nine offspring, all in southern California. Then there is the late Lee Bowden. Lee and Helen adopted each other when he was 10. He called her, “Mom”. There will be no viewing. Her body will be cremated and the ashes will be placed next to her husband in Mt. Rest Cemetery, Brooksville, in the spring. A memorial service will be held 2 p.m. Sunday, March 13, 2005, at the Evangel Baptist Church, Bucksport. Friends and acquaintances of Mrs. Tapley’s are encouraged to share a brief testimonial about her life. A reception of fellowship will immediately follow. Any one desiring to remember her may send monetary gifts to EBC’s Missionary Dept. Evangel Baptist Church, 16 Central St., P.O. Box Q, Bucksport, ME 04416. Arrangements by Mitchell-Tweedie Funeral Home, 28 Elm St., Bucksport.
HELEN MARIE TAPLEY
