Back to Ann Lewis's Table of Contents

Helen Mar Romney (Mrs. Rulon Biddulph) (1907-1990)

 The Theodore Turley Family Book, pp. 379-381

I was born Oct. 10, 1907 in Colonia Juarez, Mexico, the sixth of eight children of Frances Turley and Miles A. Romney. Both parents came at an early age to Mexico from Arizona.  My father was a builder, farmer, and fruit grower.  My earliest recollections are of a farm life and two faithful dogs who guarded my excursions, even when older sisters took me swimming, During the Mexican Revolution of 1912, our family left the Colonies four times, finally returning to Colonia Juarez in 1917.

After teaching third and fourth grades a year in Colonia Juarez, I attended BYU, entering inter-collegiate debating and winning a Talrnadge Essay Contest (103 entrants).  After two years, I left to teach 5th and 6th grades in Colonia Dublan.  After returning to BYU I was elected Vice President of my senior class and won awards in debating and drama.

After graduation, and while I was staying with Aunt Anna in Pleasant Grove, Utah, one day Rulon Biddulph appeared at the door.  He had taught in Mexico when I was there.  Now he had finished a German mission and had secured a job as a member of the technical staff at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York City.  We corresponded during the following year when I taught speech and English in Mount Pleasant High School.  On June 29, 1931 we were married in the Salt Lake Temple.

We resided in the Jackson Heights and Flushing areas of Long Island in New York City until 1941 when we moved to Madison, New Jersey; and then, a year later, to Chatham, New Jersey.  Our children, Bruce and Romney had been born in Long Island in 1935 and 1929, and Cheryl was born in Chatham in 1948, the same year I received my M.A. in English at Columbia University, New York.

During twenty years of residence in Chatham, I was busy in drama: for 17 years I was drama director for the Church, either ward or stake; for local and state N. J. Women's Clubs, I produced plays as Program Chairman or as State District Drama Director; for the New Jersey Community Theater I was directing and serving as member of the board, culminating in my becoming president.  The latter organization included over a hundred Little Theaters, the largest number for any state in the United States.  Also, in 1953, entering an original play which I directed, I won first place in a New Jersey  Woman's Club State One-Act-Play Contest.

In 1962 we moved to Fair Haven, New Jersey because of a change in the location of Rulon's work.  In addition to the activities listed above, I had been teaching English and drama in the high schools in Chatham for the last ten years. The relaxation of life near the ocean and drier weather brought me relief from asthma.

In 1966 we again moved because of the change in location of Rulon's work, living in Glen Ellyn, near Chicago.  Our sons, Bruce and Romney had graduated at Cornell and M.I.T., and later, Cheryl received her B.S.in zoology at the BYU in 1971.  During our stay here, I did research for the Church League of America.

After two and a half years in Chicago, Rulon retired in November, 1968 and we moved to Phoenix, Ariz.  Here we have pursued a variety of hobbies:  botany, rock-hunting, oil painting, ceramics, decoupage, for me; for Rulon:  radio and gardening.