University of Denver alumna Helen Driscoll died on April 15. She was 90 years old. Helen was the wife of DU professor Bill Driscoll, namesake of the Driscoll Student Center.
Helen was born in 1924 in Denver. After graduating from East High School, she enrolled at DU in 1944. She met Bill when she joined the Pioneer Promenaders square dance group; the two married in 1946. They had two boys — Clint, born in 1947, and David, born in 1949. Soon after David’s birth the family moved to California, where Bill entered the PhD program in biology at the University of California, Berkeley. After his graduation the family returned to Denver, and Bill joined the DU faculty.
Helen founded the Mother Goose Preschool at the University Park Methodist Church and also had a long career with Denver Public Schools (DPS) as a teacher and administrator. After leaving DPS, she bought the De Colores Art Gallery in Denver’s Cherry Creek neighborhood. Bill died of a heart attack in 1983, at age 63, and Helen remained a widow for the next 32 years. Helen enjoyed opera, baseball, traveling and playing bridge. She won a Community Service Award from DU at Founders Day in 1995, and in March 2014 Helen was a featured speaker at a DU sesquicentennial event honoring Bill Driscoll and the center named for him.