Helen Mott

Helen Roberta Coburn was born October 23, 1931, to parents Frank and Minnie Coburn. Helen grew up on farms outside of Hillsdale, where she cared for her pet pony Pender. In 1949, she graduated from Paola High School. Not long after she would meet a good-looking guy, Richard Mott, at a Pla-Mart dance. It was love at first sight. Helen would later recall that the night Dick came to pick her up for their first date it was raining heavily. Fearing his now muddy shoes would track across their wood floors, Minnie put down a sheet of newspaper in front of the doorway and asked Dick to wait there for Helen. Later that night once their date had ended and she returned home, Helen quietly retrieved the newspaper, now stamped with two perfect shoeprints, and placed it in her hope chest. Despite a lot of ribbing from Dick throughout the years, she continued to hold on to the memento. Early in their marriage, the couple lived in Overland Park while Dick went to art school. During that time, she worked as a secretary to Glen Dickinson of Dickinson Movie Theaters. In 1957 Dick and Helen moved back to Hillsdale into the house where they would spend the rest of their lives. While Dick started a new business, Mott Signs, Helen took care of their three children Cameron, Richelle, and Lee, worked in her parents’ store, Coburn Grocery, and taught Sunday School. Once their children had left school, Helen joined Mott Signs as a secretary, bookkeeper, and screen printer. In 1990 Dick and Helen sold the business to their son Cameron and pursued a longtime dream to become snowbirds. For three decades, the two made the trip south to spend a few months every year in Florida or Texas. During that time, they made lifelong friends and had adventures that became legend in the family (like that time they smuggled large bottles of vanilla and prescription drugs across the Mexico border). Helen passed away peacefully in her sleep on April 8, 2019. She was preceded in death by her parents Frank and Minnie, sister Elizabeth Beets, daughter Richelle, and husband Dick. She is survived by her sons Cameron and Lee; grandchildren Noah, Michael, Hannah, Taylar, Martha and Madison; and great grandchildren Julius, Gabriel, Jackson, Fiona, Agatha, Weston, and Naomi. Memorials can be made to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital or to the Hillsdale Presbyterian Youth Group. To share your memories of Helen or leave a special condolence message for her family, please click the Share a Memory tab.