DiaBLOGue

On 24 September 1977, a group of fifteen Latter-day Saint women met for a luncheon at the home of Anna Taylor in Orem, Utah. The group, including Taylor’s sister-in-law Fern Smoot Taylor, Wanda Scott, Florence…

When a third big kettle of beets boiled over, I stared at the bloody mess and asked myself if this were mere happenstance. Perhaps here was a Freudian slip trying to tell me something. Perhaps I had better sort out a few feelings, the one uppermost being: When is enough, enough? I also wondered if I am a solitary case, or whether other women find themselves in a similar bind. 

Helen Candland Stark, born of hardy pioneer Utah stock, was a thriving transplant in Delaware for most of her adult life with her husband, Henry Stark, a research chemist. Adoptive parents of three, they nurtured the Delaware Branch from its ecclesiastical preexistence until it became the Delaware Stake in 1974, only five years after they moved back to Utah. Many-roled, Helen has been teacher, actress, wife, mother, writer, environmentalist, and feminist, all interpreted in her own distinctive style. Now, almost eighty-nine and widowed by Henry’s death in 1988, she is a survivor of resilient spirit. In 1989, a DIALOGUE team of interviewers, Shirley Paxman and Belle Cluff, using questions composed by Ann Fletcher, conducted an oral history session which Helen herself edited and supplemented with the assistance of Wanda Scott, who transcribed tapes and typed many earlier drafts.