Helen J. Spence

East Lansing, Michigan

On September 27, 2014, Helen Jessie Spence died peacefully in her home with family members nearby. She was preceded in death by her husband Robert Dean Spence (1918-2005).

Helen will be greatly missed by her children: John Spence, Elizabeth Spence, Janet (William Ivancic) Spence, and Barbara (David) Staubs; her grandchildren: Sarah Ivancic, Elizabeth Ivancic, Robert Ivancic, Robert Staubs, and Laura Staubs; her great granddaughter: Hailey Neal; her nephew, Robert Schafer, his wife, Patty Schafer and their daughter, Lea Schafer.

Helen was born July 17, 1915, in Hubbardston, Michigan to Harry and Theodora (Zank) Holbrook. In the height of the Great Depression, she taught in one-room school houses near Ionia. After she graduated from MSU in 1939, she taught math, physics and chemistry in a high school in Portland, Michigan.

During WWII, She married Robert and the couple moved to Boston where he taught radar to Army and Navy personnel and she worked in the theoretical division of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Radiation Lab. Ultimately her work involved programming one of the earliest computers.

At the end of the war, Robert completed his Ph.D. while Helen took graduate-level math classes at Yale University. In 1947, they returned to East Lansing where Robert began a distinguished career in MSU’s Physics Department, and Helen cared for their four young children.

In the 1950s, drawing on her wartime work with computers, Helen began teaching computer science at MSU. In 1957, she helped program MSU’s first electronic computer, the MYSTIC. She loved teaching, and she was an exceptional teacher, who was highly regarded by her students and peers. She retired in 1987.

After retirement, Helen volunteered to teach English to members of the Vietnamese refugee community. She became increasingly involved in their lives. She helped them survive cultural transitions, major crises, and terrible tragedies; and she cheered them on through important celebrations, graduations, weddings, and births. She regarded her new-found friends as her extended family, and they regarded her as their American grandmother.

Those of us who were so fortunate to know her as a mother, a teacher, and a friend will keep Helen with us always in our hearts.

The Spence family would like to express our deepest gratitude to Helen’s wonderful caregivers: Doris Siegmann and Antoanina Slate, her hospice nurse: Denise Tamayo: and all of the hospice team members from Great Lakes Caring.

As a family, we plan to hold a small memorial service next summer. In the meantime, we give thanks for the times we had together with our dear, departed parents and for the ways they shaped our lives.