Helen Holmes Thrall

Helen Thrall, 96, died peacefully on April 20, 2017, with family at her side, at her home at The Carillon in Boulder, CO. She is survived by her children, Fred Lloyd Thrall of Boulder, Thomas Thrall of Forest Grove, OR, and Elizabeth Sims of Boulder; grandchildren Bradley, Greg Lloyd, Nick, Alex, and Kaidy; great-grandchild Ellie; daughters-in-law Gloria, Debbie and Sandy, step-grandchildren Jessica and Jeremy, and step-great-grandchildren Daniel, Jackson and Charleigh.

Helen was born December 11, 1920 in Perry, Arkansas, to Jethro and Lillian Holmes. She dearly loved her older brother, Thomas, who passed away in 1991. She graduated from Little Rock High School in 1937 at age 16. She studied Pre-Med for 2½ years at Little Rock Junior College, but had to leave due to the Great Depression.

After completing a class in Mechanical Drawing, she was courted by the instructor, Lloyd Thrall. Helen & Lloyd fell in love and were married in Little Rock in 1943. When Lloyd, an Army officer, was assigned to the European Theater, Helen supported the war effort by taking a job as technical foreman at Porocel Corp in Little Rock, testing the production of a catalyst for airplane fuel. When Lloyd returned in 1946, they moved to Dallas TX, Denver CO (where Fred Lloyd was born), Savannah GA, and finally to Northern Virginia, where Tom and Liz were born.

Helen loved her family fiercely, unconditionally and timelessly. She was involved in a broad range of activities in Great Falls VA, such as the Grange, PTA, 4-H, Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts, Little League, Pony Club, Bridge Club, Garden Club, River Bend Country Club, and Forestville Methodist Church. Late in life she found a passion for oil and watercolor painting. Helen loved traveling; after Lloyd retired from the Corps of Engineers, they embarked on a year-long tour of Europe. Lloyd became an executive with AARP, and they continued to travel, domestically and world-wide. Lloyd passed away in 1996 after 53 years of marriage.

Helen moved to Florida to be near Liz and her family, then moved with Liz and family to Boulder in 2005, which allowed for many family celebrations and regular Sunday night dinners. In 2012 she moved to The Carillon, where she made many friends. Helen was a lovely, gentle and compassionate person; her life will always be an inspiration to those who knew her.

A service in celebration of Helen’s life will be held at 5:00 PM, Monday May 29 at Crist Mortuary, 3395 Penrose Place, Boulder, with a graveside memorial following at Mountain View Cemetery, 3016 Kalmia Avenue, Boulder. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations can be made to Safe at Home Care LLC (720) 434-5242, or Elevation Home Health & Hospice (720) 608-2181. Arrangements under the direction of Crist Mortuary, Boulder, CO.

Helen Holmes was the second of two children of Jethro Shelby Holmes and Lillian Holbrook Holmes: her brother Thomas was 3 ½ years older. She was born December 11, 1920 in Perry, Arkansas. The next year the family moved 70 miles away to Booneville, AR: Jethro walked the cow, and Lillian drove a buggy with her two little children. In 1922 they moved to a rental house in Little Rock, where Jethro got a job with a Ford automobile dealer. In 1925 they moved to a new home, built by Lillian’s brother Will, at 2425 W. 17th Street in Little Rock, where Helen lived until her marriage.

As a child Helen loved to visit the Holmes and Holbrook clans in Perry and Adona. She remembers visiting Papa and Mamadelli for XMAS in 1923: Uncle Fat played Santa, and there were little candles on the tree. She loved to hear and play the player piano at Uncle Will’s house: this piano was recovered from the burning of the movie theater owned by Jethro and Will in Perry. She also remembers at a very young age burning her coat on a pot-bellied stove in church, and chasing doodlebugs under the back stairs at her home. As she grew up, there were many kids her age, mostly girls, in the neighborhood: however, she wasn’t allowed to play with Catholic kids. Black people lived several blocks away: one was a bootlegger who utilized a green light in a back bedroom to indicate when there was merchandise for sale.

Helen had a carefree childhood, but she always helped her mother cook and clean (however, she hadn’t made a full when she got married). She enjoyed playing paper dolls, cut from the Sears and Montgomery Ward catalogues. The family did OK during the Depression: they enjoyed steak each Sunday. Food cost approx. $5 per week: they often brought vegetables, beef and pork from family members in the country. Kids roller-skated, baked cookies and made root beer: sometimes they played kissing games! They’d walk to downtown (the retail area) some 2 miles away. Helen liked to sew, and made her own clothes from age 13 on. She skipped two years of school at Centennial Grammar School and West Side Jr. High, and stared high school (10th Grade) at age 13. Little Rock High School (the only white high school in Little Rock, later to become Central High School, the site of a famous integration conflict in 1959) was large, with approx. 3000 students. When she was 13, her cousin Edwin taught her to dance, and took her to a high school dance. There she met an older man, Lloyd Thrall, who carried newspapers with Edwin, and who was to figure prominently in her future. Helen also socialized with her older brother Thomas’s friends from the Methodist youth group. She graduated from high school in 1937 at age 16.

In 1937 Helen got a special treat – she got to visit Texas and Mexico with family friends, and she enjoyed her first tacos. Helen enrolled in Little Rock Junior College, and studied Pre-Med for 2 ½ years. When Thomas enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1940, tuition money became scarce, so Helen had to quit and go to work in a real estate office as cashier and assistant secretary.

On a whim, in January 1942 Helen enrolled in a class in Mechanical Drawing: the instructor was Lloyd Thrall. He ignored her until the last class, when he asked to take her home. Apparently it was love at 2nd sight! They were engaged in Oct. ’42, after which Lloyd left to go into cadet training in Chicago. As soon as he returned, Helen and Lloyd were married at First Methodist Church in Little Rock on Sept. 7, 1943. After a brief honeymoon in New Orleans (on Lloyd’s Army clothing allowance), and Helen following to several domestic postings, Lloyd received overseas orders. He and Helen parted in St. Louis, and she returned home to Little Rock.

Helen did the best she could to keep the home fires burning; on the strength of her Pre-Med chemistry background, she got a job as technical foreman at Porocel Corp in Little Rock, testing the production of porocel (a desiccant used in packing metal for shipment, and a catalyst for changing butane to isobutene – airplane fuel) out of bauxite. She had girlfriends from church, whose husbands were also overseas; they went to movies and dinner together – radical change in custom, because it was not considered safe for a woman to go out without a male escort.

By mid-1945 Thomas was home, but Lloyd was still in Europe. He had 72 points in the system for determining who got to come home; when the system got down to 72.5 points, the Army changed the system! Helen got very depressed, and left her job at Porocel. Finally in Feb. ’46 Lloyd was discharged at St. Louis MO, and re-united with Helen there. The couple then proceeded to Dallas, TX, where Lloyd resumed work with the Corps of Engineers. Housing was extremely scarce, and no new cars had been made since 1941. Finally in fall ’46 they were able to buy a car. In May 1947 they moved to Denver, CO; their first son, Fred Lloyd Jr., was born at Mercy Hospital on Sept. 24, 1947.

In January 1948 they left Denver for Savannah GA. Typically Helen would meet Lloyd at the office when work was over, and they would head for Tybee Beach for dinner in the sand and frolicking with their new son until evening. In January 1949 they transferred to the Washington DC area and rented a house in Alexandria, VA, off Mt. Vernon Blvd. near the old estate. Their second son, Thomas Michael, was born at Alexandria Hospital on July 19, 1950.

Helen and Lloyd planned to eventually locate in Oregon, but they fell in love with Virginia. They bought land (181/2 acres for $4500) in Forestville, rented a small house nearby on Leigh Mill Road, and in August 1953, moved into their partially-completed new home. Helen re-created the pioneer spirit, raising their children amidst a construction project for the next 8 years. On January 19, 1956 their daughter Elizabeth Holmes was born at Alexandria Hospital.

Helen and the family became very involved in activities in Great Falls, such as the Great Falls Grange, PTA, 4-H, Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts, Church, Little League, Pony Club, and River Bend Country Club. They all enjoyed a camping trip to northern Maine and Nova Scotia in 1961. A tradition of family vacations at South-Eastern beaches began with a camping trip to Hatteras in 1965. In April 1971 Helen’s mother Lillian came to live with the family during the warmer months, until her death in January 1976. Helen also became a very talented oil painter, doing original works and coping the works of old masters.

Helen accompanied Lloyd on some of his business trips, notably to the World Power Conference in Switzerland in 1964, and a junket to Hawaii in 1973. Lloyd retired from the Corps of Engineers in June 1973; however, they continued to enjoy traveling. They took a trip together to Greece in 1973. Tommy entered school at Purdue in fall 1973, and they visited him in November. The following spring Helen and Lloyd went to a Columbia River Treaty Board meeting in Ottawa.

Betty graduated from High school in June 1974, and enrolled in the American College of Switzerland at Leysin, Switzerland for her first year of college. Lloyd and Helen followed her to Switzerland in September. First they went to Russellsheim, Germany and picked up an Opel coupe, and from there began a tour of Europe that lasted the remainder of 1974 until June 1975, when they returned home with Betty.

In fall 1975, Betty left for BPI for her 2nd year of college, and Helen and Lloyd began an association with the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) that was to dominate their activities for the Next 9 years. Though Lloyd held the title, it was more a partnership affair; Helen went everywhere with him, and worked about as hard. The work involved much travel and a great many meetings in the area served, as well as attendance at the National Convention, and other meetings in such places as Savannah, New Orleans, St. Louis, Chicago, Milwaukee, Phoenix and Los Angeles.

A vacation trip took them to the Yucatan Peninsula in Nov. 1976 and to Spain with Tommy in March 1978. After graduating from VPI, Betty got a job as airline stewardess with Pan Am, which made her parents eligible for cut-rate air fares all over the world. They took full advantage of this bonanza. Their travels included trips to Mexico City (Nov. ’79, Kenya (Feb ’80), Rio de Janeiro (Nov. ’80), India, Nepal and Kashmir (Oct. ’81), Japan and the Philippines (Oct. ’82), Egypt and Israel (Oct. ’83), and Australia and New Guinea (Sept. ’84).

In 1978 Lloyd Jr.’s family moved nearby (1/4 mile as the crow flies, but 3 miles by road) on land given them by Lloyd and Helen: this afforded many opportunities to see grandchildren Brad and Greg. Every Saturday morning they would come over to go “trasher-trucking” – take the week’s garbage to the community pick-up.

Lloyd and Helen continued to travel, venturing again to Italy, Ireland, Portugal, France and Scotland. They also traveled to visit their far-flung offspring in Oregon, Colorado, North Carolina and Florida. They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 1993.

In November 1996 Lloyd suffered a heart attack, and passed away on November 19, 1996. Helen was devastated, and suddenly thrown into the situation of managing the homestead and looking after her brood all by herself. She suffered a severe attack of polymyalgia rheumaticia, which lasted about 2 years. In 1997 she moved to Orlando, FL to be near Betty and her family. Orlando was not a good situation, so in 1998 they moved to Titusville, FL, where Helen had a home built to her specifications at 7965 Windover Way. Meanwhile, she negotiated the sale of the Great Falls home and property. The time in Titusville was difficult, with Betty undergoing a divorce. Helen did make many friends, and enjoyed playing bridge.

In July 2005 Helen and Betty’s family all moved to Boulder, CO, where Helen bought a home at 3861 Paseo del Prado. This substantially re-united the family (except for Tom I Oregon), and allowed for many family celebrations and regular Sunday night dinners. Helen was still very involved in the lives of Betty’s children, operating Grandma’s Taxi for Nick, Alex and Kaidy; she also became very passionate about watercolor painting. In February 2012 she moved to The Carillon, and independent living facility at 2525 Taft Drive in Boulder, Where she made many friends.