Helen Elizabeth Reynolds Dillard Pennoyer

1921 - 2013

Helen Elizabeth Reynolds Dillard married Lt. Jordan Pennoyer on May 23, 1943 in Ft. Lauderdale on the eve of his shipping out for anti-submarine duty in Morocco. Their courtship had begun with a blind date in Miami, Florida, when Jordan, a "Yankee" Air Force pilot, was based in Cuba.
Helen's maternal family, the Reynolds of Sheffield, Alabama, were pioneers of Seven Mile Island. Big Daddy Reynolds moved the family into town so his girls could attend school. There he became a grocer and constable. Helen's aunts and uncles were teachers and engineers who built the Wilson Dam on the Tennessee River, bringing hydroelectricity to Sheffield and Mussel Shoals and the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Born in 1921, Helen was the sixth of seven children of parents who worked at the "high tech" phone company. At the onset of the Great Depression the Dillard Family joined Helen's Miami policeman brother and their Uncle Billy Kelly, relocating to the 1929 winter resort of Miami Beach. The family restaurant and hotel, Kelly's, was still in the family into the 1960's as Dillard's, owned by Helen's brother Frank, his wife Jackie, and their sister Linda.
After high school Helen went to New York City and stayed with her sister Margaret and music industry brother-in-law, whose brother was the noted composer Harry Warren (e.g. I Only Have Eyes for You).
Helen, a strawberry blonde, sought work as a model and appeared in Vogue and many other magazines. Her agency, John Robert Powers, arranged for her to model Vivien Leigh's costumes for the premier of Gone with the Wind. Helen enjoyed life in New York City until the onset of WWII whereupon she and her sisters returned home to Miami.
There she volunteered as a nurse's aide and worked at Embry-Riddle's Aircraft Services PR department for the war effort.
At war's end, Helen's New York City friends were all relocating to Hollywood and Jordan became a civilian pilot for Aviation Maintenance in Van Nuys. His company overhauled and delivered decommissioned military planes to buyers around North and South America. Helen acted as co-pilot on one of those deliveries flying cross-country to meet the grandparents, with her six-month old baby tucked into the glass nose cone of a AT11Twin Beachcraft.
Helen and her children, Malinda (Mrs. Yvon Chouinard), Suzanne and James were happy to be able to continue these flying vacations when Jordan began flying with Pan American World Airways in 1952 in San Francisco. When at home with the children, Helen enjoyed half of each month as a single parent, busy with PTA, church, bridge groups, sewing, oil painting, and redecorating from frequent moves. The family relocated many times, to New York, Germany, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, and Saratoga before discovering Hughson, California. Jordan settled into a routine of flying Pacific Routes, including some of the last American planes into Saigon.
The Pennoyers found their almond orchard between Hughson and Denair when their son Jim neared high school age, and they moved there in January,1973. During their first ten years in Hughson, Jordan continued flying for Pan American while learning ranching. With the generous help of their new friends and neighbors they have been growing almonds ever since. Helen earned a real estate license and enjoyed a partnership in Hughson with Pat Starn in antiques and real estate, until Jordan's retirement from Pan American in 1983.
Active in Elder Hostel, Helen and Jordan enjoyed biking across Holland and traveling Europe with friends from their Hughson United Methodist Church and Pan American. Helen and Jordan have enjoyed continuing to travel, even as Helen's health began to decline.
Helen is preceded in death by her six siblings. She is survived by her husband of 70 years, her children, her grandchildren: Fletcher Chouinard, Claire Chouinard (Mrs. Matthew Stoecker) and her two-month-old great-granddaughter, to whom she uttered one of her last sentences "You are precious." Helen slipped away painlessly in her sleep on the morning of Jan. 24. 2013.
In lieu of flowers Helen would enjoy continuing her life-long interest in children's health, with donations to:
St. Judes Children's Research Hospital, 262 Danny Thomas Place, Memphis Tn. 38105 www.stjude.org/
Please share your memories at www.allenmortuary.com.
Services directed by Allen Mortuary, Turlock, CA, (209) 634-5829