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Meet Helen Shephard
Helen Shephard had, at
that point lived a life of some privilege. Her father had a Packard auto
dealership in Kansas City, the family lived in the Country Club district and
she and her sister had always gone to private schools.
But when she learned that one of her best friends would not be able to
attend the Barstow or Sunset Hill schools with her simply because she was
Jewish, she became “incensed.” Her mother enrolled her at Sunset Hill for
high school yet every time she dropped Helen off there her daughter would
simply walk home.
Finally, the mother relented and allowed Helen to join the first class at
the public Southwest High School.
“Much to my mother’s disgust,” says Helen, 97, still smiling mischievously
as she recalls her stubborn sense of right and wrong.
You can quickly get the impression that once Helen Shepard decides
something, it stays decided. There’s more than a little bit of Idgie
Threadgoode (“Fried Green Tomatoes”) in this fascinating woman.
She will look you directly in the eye and tell you what she likes and
doesn’t like and why. And people relate to her, even in some of the stranger
“situations” (a word she likes to use) in her life.
Some years after the U.S. Supreme Court cut down the use of the restrictive
covenants that developer J.C. Nichols had used to keep Jews out of the
Country Club area, Helen’s neighbors on one side were of that faith. One day
she noticed a photograph of one of the neighbor’s grandchildren, a blond,
blue-eyed boy. The husband explained that one of his sons had married a
gentile, this boy’s mother, and how it broke his heart because it was so
important to him that his people should not marry outside the faith.
“He began to cry,” Helen recalled. “I went over and hugged him and I told
him I understood. He looked up and said: “Helen, I knew you were Jewish in
your heart.”
Many years later Helen was on one of her many overseas adventures with her
granddaughter, Nina. Their driver was Moslem.
“I have always liked to go (local) places of worship when we are in a
foreign country,” explained Helen. “So I asked him if I could go to church
with him. He was delighted. When we got to (the mosque) the next day I
started up the stairs to be with the women but he insisted I stay on the
ground floor with him. After the service he introduced me to (the imam).
Later my driver came to me and said: “He (the imam) knows that you were born
a Moslem.”
It’s no mystery to Helen:
“I honestly believe that there is one God. But people gave him different
names and they have different customs of worship. But he’s still the same
God.”
After high school, Helen went off to a women’s college in Louisiana. As with
everything else in her life, she didn’t want college to be an unpleasant
experience. It certainly wasn’t. Her fondest memories included regularly
playing bridge on the bathroom floor until the wee morning hours with her
three buddies and the required spring semester course: cruising the
Caribbean on a posh ship.
The next year she thoroughly enjoyed sorority life at the University of
Missouri, in Columbia. In between she found time to major in art and design.
Her father agreed to send her and her sister to New York City to attend a
design school. Not surprisingly, Helen and New York were made for each
other.
“I loved that town!” she says, eyes flashing. “My beau from Kansas City,
Kendall Shepard, was attending the University of Pennsylvania and he came to
New York every weekend.”
Helen was offered a scholarship to study art
in Paris but even she had to bow to the depression that was now raging.
Instead, she and Ken were secretly married.
The couple came home to Kansas City for Christmas that year, their union
still a secret. Her father threw an elaborate engagement party for them.
Then Helen’s sister got a hold of her diary and found the entry about the
secret wedding. She immediately went to their father.
“Dad said that we’d plan another wedding but not one in a church. So we were
married…again…in our backyard. Dad said we were never to tell anyone about
the first wedding. Of course, I was delighted to have another ceremony!”
Ken went into the insurance business, a lifelong profession. The couple had
two children, Maggie (Helen, her mother and her daughter were all named
Helen Margariette(?)) and John.
Her father had insisted that his family visit each state in the union and
she has maintained a passion for travel ever since. She and Ken saw much of
the country together. Since he passed away in 1989, she has been around the
world, much of the time with her granddaughter Nina, a California artist who
is so outgoing and such a people magnet that it must be a sight to behold
grandmother and granddaughter together.
They have been to Kenya, Japan, China, the South Pacific, Egypt, Turkey,
Greece, all over Europe and Australia…to name a few countries.
“If there was one place I could go back to it would be to the Australian
outback,” she smiles. “Nina became friends with out aborigine guide and we
were invited to his home for dinner. He told me that I should look for
people who are smiling whenever I walk down the street. I always have since
then. It was a real experience to meet people who think and live so happily.
And they show it! He said to me: “We don’t have all your worries.”
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