Obituary from Knoxville
Helen Davis Sublett
( 1916 – 2013)
Was born Helen Crawford Davis, July 10, 1916 in her parents’ home in Port Clyde, Maine. Mother a school teacher, father a lobsterman both from old New England families. Graduated from Rockland High School, 1933, attended University of Maine, graduated from American International College, Springfield, Mass. Became a psychiatric aid at Hartford Retreat before World War II, Worked at Pratt and Whitney’s United Aircraft , Hartford, Connecticut as a secretary. There she met a Kentuckian named Carl C. Sublett working as a lathe operator at the factory manufacturing B-17 bombers and P-38 fighter-planes until attack on Pearl Harbor. They married August 20, 1942. He went into the U. S. Army and she to live with her sister‘s family, Rev. and Mrs. Chester R. Cooper and their children ; Richard, (now) Mary Ann Worthington , and Alan, in Chicopee, Mass. until war’s end.
In 1945, after Carl’s honorable discharge they went south to be near his ailing father in Bristol, Tennessee. They started a family of their own and Helen was a full time mom. 1954 the family moved to Knoxville, Tennessee and summered in Maine. She worked in the Knoxville City Schools as a substitute teacher and soon began working with severely handicapped children and later as a well respected special educator of the ‘homebound’ until her retirement. Always, she handled ‘behind- the-scenes’ work furthering her husband Carl’s art career, (correspondence, cooking, and money matters) reveling in her family and friends. Cared for until her death by natural causes, as was her husband, Carl, until 5 years earlier, by their daughter Carol Colby, in the home built by she and her husband Mark, Union, Maine.
Helen, 96, was preceded in death by: brother, Richard K. Davis; sister, Marian D. Cooper; step-brother, George Davis; brother, Sydney K. Davis; husband of 63 years, Carl C. Sublett; and great- grandson, Theo Clark Witham. She was a member of the Church Street Methodist Church, Knoxville. Survived by: Daughter, Carol Colby and sons; grandson to Helen, Jason Carl Witham, wife Anita Clark Witham, their son, Helen’s great -grandson, Bodie Ayden Witham; grandson, Taylor Burt Witham; all of Knox County, Maine; Helen’s son, Eric Sublett, Knoxville, TN. A celebration of life was Tuesday, January 9, 2013, Ridge Baptist Church, Ridge Rd., Martinsville, Maine, near her birthplace, Rev. James Robbins officiating. See hallfuneralhomes.com for memorials, pictures and condolences.
Posted by Eric Sublett
Thursday January 31, 2013 at 3:57 pm