Helen Yenney

Helen was born October 31, 1919, on her grandparents' homestead in Langford, South Dakota, and passed away on July 8, 2024. When the farm was sold in 1923, her parents, Francis and Nellie Richardson Tweedy, moved the family to Tahoe Ridge near Kooskia. There she grew up in a large family during the Depression attending the country school on Tahoe Ridge and graduating from Kooskia High in 1938. After graduating from Lewiston Normal School, now Lewis and Clark State College in 1941, she taught at the Big Cedar School near Kooskia for $80 per month and Westlake near Craigmont before transferring to Winona, Washington, to teach in 1944.

She married Julius Yenney on November 17, 1945, in Moscow, Idaho, while they were both teaching in Winona.

In 1950, they moved to Endicott, Washington, where he became the principal and eighth grade teacher. They lived there until 1992. In 1952, Helen and Julius were blessed with the birth of their daughter, Eileen. After Julius's death in 1989, Helen continued living in Endicott until she moved to Lewiston in 1992.

Helen joined the Winona Grange in 1945 while teaching there, was a former member for the Endicott Congregational Church, and at different times during the years was a 4H Leader and taught Sunday School and Bible study. She was also a member of the Washington State Retired Teachers.

Her interests were her family, helping other people, and working with children, sewing, crocheting and traveling in their motor home when her husband was alive. She enjoyed books, music, beauty all around her, but her favorite hobby was writing. On her 80th birthday, she published a 327 page hard cover family book titled Tweedy Tracks: Frank and Nellie's Family with records back to the Mayflower and beyond for her family.

Helen was preceded in death by her parents, her sister Irene (1942); brothers, Earl LeRoy, Seth Thomas, Emerson, Glenn, Verl and Cecil, and daughter Eileen Osmundson. She is survived by her son-in-law, Ossie Osmundson of Woodland, Wash., two granddaughters and their husbands, Andrea and Jason Milstead of Woodway, Wash., and Katie and Keith Stevens of La Center, Wash., three great-grandchildren, and one sister, Ethel Jones of Vancouver, Wash.

The burial service was held at Lewis and Clark Memorial Gardens in Lewiston on July 23rd.