Helen Lucille Wienert Scott died peacefully six weeks after
her 100th birthday.
She had decided when she was 30, she wanted to live to be
100. She achieved that. Then she decided that she was tired of the pain she had
been in for two or more years and that she was ready to die. On January 20,
2022, she did.
She was born in Preston, Nebraska, on December 8, 1921, one
of six children of Henry and Martha Bletscher Weinert. She attended Westmar
College, Le Mars, Iowa and later completed a degree in home economics at Iowa
State University. She held several teaching positions before eventually working
at Red Bird Mission in Beverly, Kentucky.
When we were older, we found out that she worked in
Connecticut one summer and hitchhiked to Tanglewood. A few years later she was
more-or-less left at the altar.
In 1957, through her brother and sister-in-law in Oklahoma,
she met a young widower with two young children (Pam and Larry). He had been
married to a friend of hers who had died suddenly of a brain tumor. She came
from KY to OK, where they met one summer. They wrote until Christmas, when she
came to OK, where they got engaged, and married the next summer. (?MOM! You
hardly knew him! MOM! You hardly spent any time with him! MOM! What were you
thinking?? ?He had good references.?) They had another child (Don).
She later continued her teaching career in the Waukomis, OK
area until moving to Newton, KS in 1982. After Harold?s death in 1987 she
volunteered for three to six month stretches in Nashville, TN, New Mexico,
Hawaii, Alaska, and Kentucky. In between those trips, the woman we thought was
a mild-mannered, stereotypical schoolteacher, turned into a female Indiana
Jones and traveled to England, Belgium, Germany, Scotland, Israel, and China.
She took a hot air balloon ride in her 70?s and there are rumors that she went white
water rafting.
The last few months of her life she was losing her appetite
but mentioned that ice cream sounded good. We made sure there was Braum?s ice
cream available and ultimately her last meal turned out to be ice cream for
breakfast.
She was proceeded in death by her husband, Harold, her
brothers, Franklin, Glenn, John and David and her sister Anna Marie. She is
survived by her children Pam (Doug) James, Larry (Pam) Scott and Don (Beth)
Scott, five grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
A service will be held at a later date in Newton, KS and her
ashes will be buried in Enid, OK.
And, yes, the provided picture WAS taken when she was 100.
Well done, Mom!
