About Helen

At the age of 21, Helen owned a bakery in Oxford, Michigan, the state of her birth, where she learned culinary arts from a Viennese baker of some renown. When getting up in the middle of the night to create loaves of bread became tiresome, she sold the business and bought a millinery shop. Her up-to-date hat designs sold well but Helen decided she could use her talents in a different way. She joined the J.C. Penney Company in their advertising and display department and enjoyed many years of service, acting as hostess for Mr. Penney himself on many occasions.

Creating magnificent music is another of Helen’s talents. She played clarinet in concert and marching bands and orchestras, sang alto in operettas and chorale groups, and enjoyed singing duets with a friend who had a fine soprano voice. Helen directed a Presbyterian Church choir for fifteen years before discovering The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints through an introduction to the Tabernacle Choir on her initial trip to Salt Lake City. She sang in the Detroit Stake choir for 2 years, and even though she recognized the Book of Mormon as a second witness of Jesus Christ, it took four years of study–two as a member of the Detroit Stake choir–before she knew the Book of Mormon was true and accepted baptism. She delights in remembering, “Governor George Romney was my stake president, and his wife, Lenore, was one of the finest friends anyone could imagine. And I was Mitt Romney’s Sunday school teacher!”

It was five more years before Helen’s husband, Walter Schlie, joined the church in June 1961, during which time they moved home and bought a bookstore a block west of the Mesa Temple in Arizona.

After some 25 years of exceptional bookstore experience, opposition struck. “As a result of financial setbacks because of the downturn in real estate values in the early ’80s,” says Helen, “we were out of the bookstore and lost everything, including our home. Then Walter contracted cancer. I nursed him for 11 years prior to his death in 1995. In the year 2000 I discovered I had breast cancer, which required an operation, chemotherapy and radiation. I’ve been in remission for two years, and my hair has grown back enough to have my braid again, so I have a place to park my poetry pen.”

Since then, Helen Spencer Schlie has been blessed with the kind of faith that overcomes tribulation and turns sorrow into joy both for herself and countless others. Despite the ripening years, she has unusual energy. By means of determination, fortitude, and a series of miracles, she has opened this on-line store. Helen will be selling her collection of outstanding works of art by well-known LDS artists and others, and many rare LDS books.

Helen Spencer Schlie has one daughter, four grandchildren, and twelve great-grandchildren. But her family of friends extends far beyond immediate relations. Whether she’s taking time chatting to art enthusiasts from every corner of earth, serving as an ordinance worker and organist in the Arizona Temple, or helping the missionaries, both present and future—her light shines forth.