HelenGeis

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PEBBLE BEACH – Beloved community volunteer and champion for hospice care, Helen Westland, passed away peacefully on September 13, 2006 at Westland House, a facility renamed just last year in her honor by Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula. She was 89. Helen was a long-time volunteer for the hospital's auxiliary and served as president in 1970. She was also widely known and admired for her resolute passion to promote and fundraise for hospice care. She led many efforts to raise money to build a hospice inpatient care center which opened in Monterey in 1994, and for hospice patient care ingeneral. Born Helen Geis in Salina, Kansas, to John Raymond Geis and RaraMargaret Benn Geis, she was the fourth of six children. She attended the University of Kansas in Lawrence to study journalism and was a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma Sorority. In her senior year she began her own radio show "Rising at Riley with Cap'n Kay Smiley" on KSAL in Salina. Her listeners included a devoted following of servicemen stationed at the nearby Fort Riley military base. They often wrote in song requests, and Helen kept many of those letters to remind her of the part she played keeping up the morale of the soldiers. In 1944, Helen joined the American Red Cross and sailed on a British ship across the dangerous wartime Atlantic Ocean to England where she was assigned to a division known as Club Mobile. These volunteers traveled in reconfigured buses to various military bases to serve freshly baked doughnuts to American and British troops. In 1945, she returned to the U.S. but only for a short time as the Red Cross recalled her, this time to the South Pacific island of Kwajalein, then on to Guam. She was later sent to Japan and China with the Red Cross before returning home to the United States in 1948. Two years later, Helen went to Washington, D.C. as a staff member for Kansas Senator Andrew Schoeppel, then in 1952 worked for Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower's presidential campaign. She was named confidential assistant to Frederick H. Mueller, President Eisenhower's Secretary of Commerce, in 1958. Helen married U.S. Rep. Jack Westland, R-Everett, Washington, in 1959. The couple retired to Pebble Beach in 1965 and, as avid golfers, could often be found among friends on the golf course at Cypress Point. Her husband died on November 3, 1982. Helen became a founding board member of the first hospice program in Monterey County in 1978. In 1997, she was a member of the board that formed Hospice Foundation, an organization created to raise funds and make grants to local hospice and end-of-life care programs. She remained a voting member of that board until 1998 when Hospice Foundation awarded her the honorary Emeritus title to recognize and honor her long-time, extraordinary commitment to the hospice caring ideal. Until late 2004, she could be found nearly every day in the Hospice Foundation office writing personal notes of thanks to members of the community whose donations supported hospice care. She also remained an auxiliary volunteer at the hospital until 2004. Hospice Foundation bestowed many honors to recognize Helen. In 1998, an award was established bearing her name that annually recognizes individuals who share her commitment to hospice through their volunteerism. The Foundation's Legacy Society was renamed in her honor, and she was named Guest of Honor at the Hospice Foundation Golf Scramble in 2000 and the Hospice Foundation Ball in 2004. Helen will be profoundly missed by all who knew her, and who met her. She will long be remembered for her indomitable spirit for helping those at the end of life, and for her undeniable passion for golf. Her legacy and her life live on at Westland House. Helen is survived by her brother, Bob Geis of Denver, Colorado, andher 12 nieces and nephews, and numerous grandnieces and grandnephews. Donations may be sent to The Helen Westland Endowment Fund, Hospice Foundation, P.O. Box 1798, Monterey, CA 93942. Post your condolences or share your memories of Helen at www.hffcc.org. A celebration of Helen's life will be held Saturday, September 30, 2006 at 11 a.m., Carmel Mission Basilica, with a reception to follow in Crespi Hall at the Mission. Interment will be at Arlington NationalCemetery.

--- The Monterey Herald, Sept. 20, 2006