Helen Hyde Ennis

Helen was born on 12 May 1926 in Sioux City, Iowa, to Marguerite and Harlan Hyde, both of whom worked in the famous Sioux City stockyards. Helen was the younger of two daughters, Clare being older.

After a 2-year college degree at the University of Iowa, Helen worked in the accounting department of a local airfield. It was there that she met her future husband, Dr. Arthur L. Ennis (Bill) who was training to serve as a waist gunner on a B17 bomber. They married on his return from WW2.

Helen and her new husband completed degrees at Auburn University. With degrees in hand, they moved to Houston, Texas where their oldest son, William, was born. Later, they moved to Oak Ridge, Tennessee where Dr. Ennis worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It was there that he made the decision to attend medical school. Deborah, their daughter, was born in Oak Ridge.

The family moved to Birmingham, Alabama where Dr. Ennis went to medical school and Helen taught elementary school. Her salary was $1200/year. In Birmingham, their third child, David, was born.

Dr. and Mrs. Ennis moved to Gadsden in 1964. Mrs. Ennis not only raised the three children but participated in many social and educational programs in the city.

Helen was an exceptionally bright person, well educated and socially conscious. She had a delightful sense of humor and had an ear for the descriptive but humorous local phrases used in the South. She was a self-taught bookkeeper and maintained the finances for her husband's medical practice for many years.

Helen was predeceased by her husband in 2015. She was the matriarch of a large family and touched each life with wisdom and her deep love. She is survived by her three children and their spouses. Willam and his wife, Conni, live in Alaska; Dr. Deborah Doineau and her husband, Philippe, live in Nashville where she is a practicing clinical psychologist; and Dr. David Ennis and his wife, Dr. Elizabeth Ennis, are both practicing physicians in Birmingham. There are five grandchildren (Emma and Eileigh Doineau; Ian, Carter, and Kate Ennis) and now three great-grandchildren.

There will be a visitation at Collier Butler Funeral Home from 3:30 to 5:30PM on 2 November. The family-conducted service will begin around 4PM. Helen will be interred with her husband in the Alabama National Cemetery in Montevallo on 3 November at 11:30AM.