Person:Helen Burke (2)

She was in love with a wonderful Irishman and they had plans to marry. But he was sent overseas in WW1 and was killed. She never married after that. She was a very close friend of our family. (Pat Starr Newquist 5/03)

In 1916, a siege of flu in Oklahoma turned into pneumonia and tuberculosis for her. She went to Agnes Memorial Hospital in Denver for the climate and rehab program. She was 22, and stayed there for 2 years. Upon her cure, she went for the Colorado TB Association. Her life was filled with meetings, phone conversations, and travels throughout the state on the prevention or cure for TB.

She attended the National Catholic School of Social Work in Washington, DC on a scholarship in 1925. She participated in three White House Conferences on Social Work presided over by the First Ladies Coolidge, Hoover, and Roosevelt.

Upon retiring from the TB Association as Executive Secretary after 25 years of service, she attended the University of Denver and acheived a BA degree. She was working on her Masters when Mayor Quigg Newton appointed her as head od the Denver Human Rights Commission, where she remained for 7 years. She was named in "Who's Who of American Women" in 1958-59.

She had two guidelines in her life - the Catholic Church and her Irish family. She was a successful career woman before it was fashionable. Although she never married, she was the matriarch of the family. She devoted years to the 350-page Burke-McCarthy Family History. Her life spanned 18 presidents, five wars, and changes in the world that were astonishing. Her death is the end of an era in many ways. She was buried in the family plot in Perry, OK.

Contributed by Mary & Joe Fuhrman