Senior Spotlight wheelhouse. So I volunteered.” Over the past two years, she and Donna Ruth Morgan [see page 13], president ex-officio of FOLSOI, have obtained grants for children’s programs including robotics and a future Girls Who Code program. They also got grants for equipment to convert photos to digital media and VHS tapes to DVD.
Helen always had a passion for children’s literacy, primed during her year as a children’s librarian. “I love the way children’s books delight and excite. And I adore picture books. They can say so much with so few words and can be incredibly impactful. And I thought, I want to do that!” And she did. Helen published her first children’s book, “Sisters in the Air,” a double biography about female pilots Phoebe Omlie and Louise Thaden who met at the first women’s air race in 1929 and were active in aviation for the next 20 years. The book started as a picture book and expanded at her publisher’s request. Helen is now working on several picture books. In her free time, she likes to read, of course, and walk, exercise, and take exercise classes at the Brunswick Center at Southport. She enjoys cultivating flowers like camellias and adult coloring. What a perfect retirement reinvention!
Photo by Gary Whittaker
Helen Whittaker displays a copy of her children’s book Sisters in the Air, a biography of two women pilots in the early years of aviation. Whittaker has a passion for children’s literacy and is including writing in her retirement reinvention.
Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. ~James Baldwin
