Helen (Kenoyer) Mosher

BRUNSWICK – Dawn on Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2019 was the first morning in 38,077 days that the sun’s rays did not illuminate the soft brown eyes of Helen (Kenoyer) Mosher as she had peacefully completed her circle of life in the company of her family just the afternoon before. Hers was a life that began on Sept. 17, 1915 in a small sod house built by Henry and Annie Kenoyer on the native plains of Vale, South Dakota. She was the first daughter born to a family of 10 children and so began a life for the ages that bore all the hallmarks and fortitudes of American history’s Greatest Generation.

Her mother taught her as a young girl that a mother’s love is not divided like pumpkin pie between the children she brings into the world. Much to the contrary, a mother’s heart is multiplied with each successive life she creates, which explains a mother’s seemingly boundless capacity for love. What then, can we say of our Great-Great Grammy Helen who created, then mothered five living generations of children? Her lifetime is ultimately a mother’s love story of a proud and fiercely resilient woman who desperately loved her children, husband and extended family, while serving as the cornerstone of her community during the 104 years that her light shined ever so brightly on this earthly realm.

The family of Helen (Kenoyer) Mosher tearfully announces the peaceful passing of our beloved matriarch on Monday afternoon. Helen crossed into the flowered fields of the great hereafter to join her pre-deceased husband Charles Mosher of 64 years, with whom she mothered more than 80 direct decedents, each of whom carries her enduring legacy of grace, piety and generosity. Her humble beginnings on the Cheyenne River and pioneer values forged an ideology of personal resolve that placed family as the first priority in all matters. She learned as a young girl that home is where the heart rests after her family of 12 boarded a Dodge Touring car and Model T Ford truck to travel to a farm in Windsor, Maine where the Kenoyers made their home. Her lifetime in Maine transcended the travails of living history through the Great Depression and multiple wartime services, to which she was no stranger as her Gold Star family gave handsomely to the causes of our nation. The loss of her youngest brother Russell Kenoyer over the skies of Germany on April 16, 1945 never healed, despite her stalwart faith bolstered by her decades long worship at the South China Community Church on the shores of China Lake. Her longevity likewise saw the predeceased passing of her oldest daughter Margaret, brothers and sisters and grandchildren Laurie and Ross.

Having met Charles Mosher, the love of her life, she moved from her family home in Windsor to their first home in Benton Station where they raised a family, before moving to their final home overlooking China Lake. It was here that they lived their elder lives in the company of the huge family they bore spending summers at small cottages on Pine Point on China Lake hosting regular family gatherings and their rapidly multiplying grandchildren.

Her surviving family in addition to her children Richard, David and Winnifred and cousin Chuck Sisson who grew up in the Kenoyer family, includes more than 76 grandchildren, great and great-great grandchildren. We will remember with affinity her illuminating and continuous presence in our lives, her emphasis on education, family history and summers on China Lake with heavy cookie jar lids, eating white perch for supper, Red Sox games on the radio, motor boats, painted rocks leading to the shore, slamming screen doors, the aromatic scent of pine needles and, always, her humming melodies somewhere in the house not far away.

Most of all, Helen Mosher was an affirmation not only of the existence of God in our world, but that He must truly love us to give us so many years in the company of her great maternal spirit. She was, after all, our mother whom we loved as the circle continues, unbroken.

A celebration of life will be held Saturday, Dec. 28, 2019 at 11:00 a.m. at the South China Community Church. Interment in the spring of 2020 at Chadwick Cemetery, South China.

Arrangements by Dan & Scott’s Cremation & Funeral Service, 445 Waterville Road, Skowhegan.

Friends wishing may make donations in her memory to:

S. China Community Church

246 Village St.

S. China, ME 04358