Helen Joyce Dendy Smith was born at home in a rock house deep in the Texas Hill Country in Fredonia on June 19, 1934.  She attended school in Fredonia and then Mason, Texas, graduating at the top of her class.  She met the love of her life, Robert C. Smith of nearby Pontotoc, on a double date to the movie house.  She married him in 1951, and they were together for 69 years until his death in 2020.  Helen used to say “I know a lot of people call him Bob, maybe I will when I get to know him better.”  They took off to see the world, although they only got as far as Albuquerque and St. Louis before making a permanent home in San Antonio.

Helen and Robert raised two children, Karen and Steven.  She was a stay-at-home mom until they were in junior high and high school, when she went to work to earn their college tuition.  She worked as a school secretary at first, then she went to college herself and obtained medical secretary associate degree.  She was soon hired by Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio.  She started out a medical secretary, then edited papers that the doctors submitted to medical journals, and through hard work retired out of the Clinical Investigations Department as a manager.  At her retirement, it was said that three people were hired to do what she the job she doing for years.  In retirement, she wanted to move back to the Hill Country, but they eventually chose to stay in San Antonio, where she was the lay leader of Los Angeles Heights Methodist Church for over a decade.  At one time or another, she took care of her kids, grandkids, her mom, and her mother-in-law, and then looked after the church widows who could no longer come to the Sunday service.

Helen was a happy, joyful person, and an adventurer.  She followed her husband down nearly all the rivers in Texas as he paddled in 18 years of canoe races, with two kids in tow.  She rode on the back of a motorcycle across the United States with her husband to go see her uncle in California.  They watched the Monarch butterflies flow over the mountains in Monterrey, Mexico, saw the Angel Falls in Venezuela from a helicopter, and paddled down the Rio Grande in Big Bend National Park.  She was an avid reader, the best friend you could ever want, a loving wife and mother, and by all accounts smart, funny, warm, and generous.

She leaves behind her children, Karen Gay Smith of Houston and Steven Douglas Smith and his wife, Susan, of Houston, five grandchildren, Josh and his wife Kelly, Doug, Jasper, Shannon and Connor, and one great-grandson, Sean, niece Julie and nephew Johnny, as well as her lifelong friend, Ella Sue.  She was preceded in death by her parents, Douglas and Anna Dendy, and her sisters Kathy Dendy Dye and Nancy Dendy Gibson.

She will be deeply missed by all who knew her.  Services will be held at Mason Global Methodist Church at 2:00 p.m. on April 12, 2026, with interment at Pontotoc Cemetery.