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| Helen Green Turin, 1935-1998 |
Helen Elizabeth Green was born on July 18, 1935 in Layton, Utah to Parnell and Dorothea Frease Green. One of her paternal great-grandfathers was Christopher Layton, an original patriarch of the Mormon Church, who crossed the great plains with Brigham Young and helped establish the original Mormon colony in Utah. The Green family are descendants of the first child of Christopher Layton's ninth family. Helen was fourth out of five siblings, one of whom died as a youngster. An expanded chart of Helen's roots, going back to the eighteenth century is given here.
Helen graduated from the University of Utah in 1957, having majored in education and psychology. After working at Sonoma State Hospital in California, an institution for the severely mentally disabled, she returned to the University of Utah to pursue Master's studies in psychology. In 1962, she returned to California to join the staff of the newly established San Francisco Day Treatment Center, which treated mental patients on an outpatient basis.
She married George Turin on September 11, 1964. On the birth of their first child, David, on September 8, 1965, she decided to become a full-time mother. Their second child, Abigail, was born on June 15, 1971. While raising her children, Helen pursued the love of art she had had since a teen-ager. For many years she was on the board of the University of California Berkeley Art Museum.
Helen's affinity for children made her house a second home for the friends of her children. During her last illness, a letter to Helen from one of Abby's friends said it well: "Your house was filled with fun and adventure and enthusiasm and exotic foods and excitement. At the center was you and your irrepressible spirit. You were able to be a special friend to each of us and make each of us feel that she was the most important person in the world. You made me feel that I was beautiful and intelligent and that I was capable of great accomplishments."
She died of cancer on July 18, 1998, at the age of only 63.