Helen Caroline Kendall Jensen died July 29, 2005 at Ashland Community Hospital. She was 92, and had lived in Ashland since 1985.

Helen, daughter of Herbert Wilson Kendall and Ruth Dryden Kendall, was born in Fremont, Nebraska. She lived in Springfield, Missouri, Boston, Massachusetts, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Grand Island, Nebraska before the family finally settled in Kearney, Nebraska when she was nine years old. By this time she had two brothers, John and Bruce. At age sixteen, having graduated from high school, she worked as a reporter on the local daily newspaper for a year before going to Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln, Nebraska where she graduated in 1934 with a B.A. in English.

After college, Helen worked for the Farm Security Administration, took graduate work in sociology at the University of Kentucky, and was a disaster case worker for the American Red Cross at the time of the 1937 Ohio River flood. In 1938, she married John P. Jensen, her uncle’s law partner in Kearney, Nebraska. They had three daughters and a son, all who survive: Jo Ann Entwistle of Lockport, Illinois; Kay Maser of Ashland, Oregon; Ruth Jensen of Lincoln, Nebraska; and John Jensen Jr. of Tacoma, Washington. (In addition, Helen is survived by her brother, John Kendall, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, and one grandchild, Lee Anne Maser of Thessaloniki, Greece.)

The Jensen family lived in Kearney, Nebraska and also in Evergreen, Colorado, where they had a summer home. Helen’s husband, John, died in 1965.

Helen had taught school for two years and was completing her Masters Degree in English from the University of Nebraska/Kearney, the year her husband passed away. She then moved to Vincennes, Indiana and taught English, sociology and speech at Vincennes University for four years. Her summers were spent traveling overseas, including one trip by Volkswagen across Scandinavia, Finland, Russia, the Balkans, and Eastern Germany.

After four years in Vincennes, she stored her furniture and went to Mexico for the summer, taking classes at the Instituto in San Miguel Allende. After her summer classes in Mexico, she drove to California and sailed for Hong Kong. From there she traveled to Australia and through the Orient and took a bus from Tehran to London, arriving there just before Christmas. Returning to California in late January, she enrolled at the University of California for doctoral work, secured a job in the Counseling Center at California State University/Long Beach, and bought a house in Long Beach, where she lived until she moved to Ashland, Oregon, in the fall of 1985.

Her travel while she lived in Long Beach included research in Samoa and New Guinea, extensive travel in Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand, a Friendship tour to China in 1978, an Audubon study in the Galapagos Islands, and Elderhostel in Great Britain and a journey to Jordan, Israel and Greece.

She was active in the Methodist Church in Long Beach and in the League of Women Voters, and served as president of her P.E.O. chapter and head of the Long Beach P.E.O. Reciprocity, which was made up on thrity-one chapters. She was a docent at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, where she also edited the docent newsletter for a year.

After moving to Ashland , Oregon, in 1985, Helen was a volunteer with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, a docent at the Schneider Museum of Art at Southern Oregon University, a member of the Ashland Study Club, Chapter EE of P.E.O., and AAUW. She volunteered for many organizations including Meals on Wheels, Dunn House, and ICCA. She was a member of the First United Methodist Chruch of Ashland, where she was lay leader for two years, as well as President of United Methodist Women.

All who knew Helen appreciated her great sense of humor and wit, optimistic outlook on life, wonderful intelligence and her loving spirit which she shared so freely with her family and friends from all over the world, as well as in her community.

A Memorial Service, reception following, will be held at the First United Methodist Church of Ashland, 175 North Main Street at 11:00 A.M. on Saturday, August 20. Her ashes will be interred in the Methodist churchyard. Instead of flowers, Helen requested that she be remembered by donations to the First United Methodist Church of Ashland or donations to the American Friends Service Committee, 1501 Cherry St., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19102.

(additional: Helen was the wife of John Philip Jensen Sr. John was the child of James Peter (JP) and Emma Marguerite (Miller) Jensen. JP was Soren Jensen’s fourth child.)