Helen Vandusen Johnson

JOHNSON, HELEN V.

Helen V. Johnson's brave battle with pulmonary disease and cancer ended on March 29, 2006, four days short of her 78th birthday. She died at home, where she spent her final days in the company of her loving daughter and son. They are thankful for a mother whose love for them, and for her grandchildren, was constant; whose varied interests and enthusiasms served to educate and inspire; and whose passion for friendship, faith and community offered an example to emulate.

Helen was born in Denver on April 2, 1928. Her father, Harold A. Van Dusen, owned a bank in Brush, Colorado and later worked with the Federal Reserve in Wichita, where Helen attended high school. Helen's mother, Georgia Carlson Van Dusen, was the daughter of pioneer Denver businessman Charles G. Carlson, founder of Carlson-Frink Dairy, an early Denver creamery that later became Borden's Dairy.

Helen graduated from Colorado College and became a medical technologist. While working at Denver General Hospital, she met Dr. Edward S. Johnson, who would become the hospital's chief of pathology and a faculty member at the University of Colorado Medical School. They wed in 1952 and had celebrated 21 anniversaries by the time of his death in 1974.

Helen had a conservative code of values, one of which was the importance of volunteerism. She contributed time and resources to St. Luke's Hospital, the Denver Museum of Natural History, Opera Colorado, and the Denver Symphony (serving a year as president of the Denver Symphony Guild). She was a president of the Women of St. John's Cathedral, chair of the Cathedral's annual bazaar, and member of the Stewardship Committee of the Diocese of Colorado.

Her family was her top priority, and she gladly performed the carpooling and attendant duties that went with having a son in the boy's choir at St. John's and a daughter in ballet lessons and Girl Scouts.

To be Helen's friend, all that was necessary was to respond to her open and unpretentious outreach. You would most enjoy her if you shared one of her loves: classical music, mysteries, history, travel, foreign languages, or the life of the spirit. It helped to be a good listener, because she liked to talk, and her remarkable memory gave her a lot to talk about -- every minute detail of a trip you took together, or every nuance in a biography she had read, or every character, twist and turn in practically any grand opera in the literature.

She wasn't without surface contradictions: A committed Republican (she was a Denver precinct captain and energetic volunteer for Goldwater in 1964 and McKevitt for Congress in the early 1970s), she counted many Democrats among her closest friends. A traditionalist in taste and style, she drew inspiration from the Episcopal Church renewal movement, with its non-traditional liturgical expressions, that blossomed during the 1970s and 80s.

She is survived by daughter Betsy Welty, son Harold Johnson, and grandchildren, Ian and Nicole Welty. All of them, along with her daughter-in-law Alice and son-in-law Russ, remember her with gratitude and pride.

Funeral services will be Tuesday, April 4, 11 a.m., at St. John's Episcopal Cathedral, 1313 Clarkson, Denver. Memorial donations may be made to St. John's Episcopal Cathedral, or to St. Martin's Chamber Choir, 2015 Glenarm Place, Denver, 80205-3121.