Helen Elizabeth Johnston

Alaska resident Helen Elizabeth Johnston, 94, died of natural causes May 7, 2008 at Elvie’s Home Care Center in Wasilla. As she requested, no service will take place.

Johnston was born Aug. 18, 1913, in Minneapolis, Kan., to Benjamin and Bertha Miller. She was raised in Oklahoma. She graduated from high school and attended nursing training during the Great Depression. She graduated as a registered nurse and spent the next nine years working as a nurse at an Indian Service hospital in Oklahoma.

Johnston then moved to Seattle, and while working in a hospital there, she met Leland Clifford “Cliff” Johnston, who had filed on a homestead in the Sand Lake area of Anchorage. Helen and Cliff were married in 1943, and she traveled by steamship to Anchorage to start a new life with him on the homestead.

“She became a dedicated pioneer, mother and homemaker,” her family wrote.

They had three sons, Fred, Larry and Ben, all born in Anchorage. After Cliff’s death in 1987, Helen continued to live on the family homestead for two more years then moved to the Anchorage Pioneers’ Home. For the past two years, she resided at Elvie’s Home Care in Wasilla.

Johnston was preceded in death by her husband, Cliff; sister Mildred Muth; and brother Laurence Miller. She is survived by her sons Fred of Haines, Larry of Tagish, Yukon, and Ben of Palmer; six granddaughters; seven great-grandchildren; and many nieces and nephews.