Helen Whitemore McQuiston died peacefully at her home in Legacy Village Retirement Community on April 2, 2024 following a short illness. Services will be 10:30 a.m. Monday, May 13, 2024 at the St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Stillwater, Oklahoma



Born Helen Webb Whitemore on September 1, 1933 in Piedmont, Alabama, she was the daughter and only child of Lt. Colonel Arthur Chester Whitemore and Helen Webb Whitemore. As the daughter of a career military officer, she lived in many different places throughout her childhood, including Vienna, Austria soon after WWII. Some of her fondest memories are of the time she spent in Eldorado, Arkansas, where she graduated from high school in 1951.


She then graduated from Florida State University in 1955, where she was a member of Pi Beta Phi sorority. She met her husband Faye the summer of 1954, at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri, where he was stationed, along with her father. They married in August, 1955, relocated to Stillwater, Oklahoma and Helen worked for the U.S Department of Agriculture while Faye went to school at OSU.


Following short stints in Ft. Worth and West Lafayette, Indiana - where Faye received his Phd from Purdue University, Helen and Faye returned permanently to Stillwater in 1969. At this point Helen kept busy as a proud homemaker and mother to three children while Faye established himself as a prominent professor and researcher in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at OSU.


A generation of children in Stillwater will remember Helen fondly as Miss Helen, first at Miss Carolyn's preschool, and then at Sunshine Tree Learning Center, which she opened in 1979. She was passionate about teaching and loved every child who attended Sunshine Tree until she sold the school in the early 1990's when Faye retired from teaching at OSU. She then volunteered her time at the St. Andrews Thrift Shop for many years - a true labor of love.


Helen is survived by her three children, David A. McQuiston of Excelsior Springs, MO, Steven C. McQuiston of Carbondale, CO and Helen Lynn Kiklevich (Roark) of Montrose, Colorado. Also her cousin, Joan Webb Wilson, her niece, Sandra Dotts of Raleigh, NC and her nephew, Greg Dotts (Karen) of Tulsa, OK.


Memorials in Helen's name may be made to St. Jude Children's Hospital or to the charity of one's choice.