Physical description
Helen Alice Gibson
Born: 9 October 1910
Died: 8 September 2007
HELEN Gibson will be remembered as the kindergarten assistant with a heart of gold.
The generous 96-year-old Belgrave woman died on Saturday 8 September after contracting pneumonia.
But close friends said that her body was worn out and it was her time to die.
Born in New South Wales, in September 1910, Helen Alice Gibson was the third of four children.
She spent the first 20 years of her life living in different parts of NSW before the family moved to Victoria in 1932, and settled in Nar Nar Goon.
A loving and generous person, Miss Gibson dedicated her life to caring for her parents after her brothers were killed in action in Lybia.
She gave up the chance to marry or have children to look after her parents.
Despite making sacrifices to care for her parents, she always had a place in her heart for children.
As a young woman, she trained as a governess by correspondence and later qualified as a preschool play leader in 1946.
She worked with young children and their families from 1946 until she retired in the mid-1970s.
Miss Gibson spent many years in the hills teaching young children after moving to Belgrave with her parents in 1951.
Her first job as a teacher was as an assistant at Belgrave Kindergarten and then as a play leader at Belgrave Heights until 1970.
She then went on to work in Knox on an early childhood program before retiring.
Her love of children and the environment also led her to write a number of children’s stories, including Woorayl the Lyrebird, which was published in 1987.
Miss Gibson has also been fondly remembered as a local historian and a woman with a great passion for the outdoors.
Even in her 80s, she refused to let her age dampen her spirits and would still bushwalk around the Dandenong Ranges.
A member of the Southern Sherbrooke Historical Society (SSHS), she always had a passion for the past and was always willing to help out with research.
Members said she was a kind-hearted woman who gave much of herself without expecting anything in return.
This showed in 1989 when she reluctantly accepted a community award.
“Helen was a very private woman and didn’t like to make a fuss,” SSHS members said.
They said she would have been angry that the group had written about her life, but they believe it’s a story that needs to be told.
“She was one of the world’s true givers but she was a very private person,” they said.
