Helena Dora (Struve) Cotton, known to the world as Helen, died on September 11, 2024, after her family rushed to her bedside for the final time. Born on January 10, 1927, on the farm her family had lived on since 1868, she was 97. As the only child of Leslie and Alta (Eggers) Struve, she spent her youth chasing cousins across the fields and woods of Hauntown.
Her teen years were marked by World War II, when she watched the boys she’d grown up with cross the oceans to risk their lives for freedom. After she graduated from Miles High School, she helped the war effort by working as a secretary at Schick Hospital. When Joseph Cotton returned from the Pacific Theatre, they reunited, having met in a muggy cornfield years before, in that rural right-of-passage: detasseling. They were married at the Little Brown Church in Nashua, Iowa in 1947, and a few years later, Thomas, and then Cynthia, were born.
While Helen and Joe raised their children, they started a suite of small businesses in Sabula, including Cotton Brothers Plumbing, Heating and Oil, which they founded with Joe’s brother and his wife. Meanwhile, Helen and Joe continued the tradition of farming her family’s land and running the Struve Mill, which brought her ancestors to Hauntown all those generations ago. One of Helen’s capstone achievements was her work establishing The Sawmill Museum in Clinton, which features a room of antique equipment she donated from her family’s now defunct mill, as well as an animatronic bust of her great-grandfather Ernest Struve, who chats in a German accent with other sawmill titans of his age.
Helen lived a rich life, filled with family and friends, whom she made wherever she went. She was an avid gardener, baker, cook, painter, seamstress, musician, card player, RAGBRAI rider, and stunt roller-skater long before the X Games.
She is survived by her children, Tom (Kathleen Frett) Cotton of Clinton, and Cindy Cotton Cram of Hauntown, along with four grandchildren: Christopher (Kate McCarron) of Kansas City, Missouri; Sara Helena (Steve Fields) of Medina, Minnesota; Amanda (Eric Ruback) of Clarendon Hills, Illinois; and Emily (Matthew Adams) of Dubuque, Iowa. Together, her grandchildren gave her nine great-grandchildren, many of whom called her Grandma Grape: Grace, Olivia, Hadley, River, Addison, Doran, Sebastian, Selby, and Brooks. Her parents, husband, and devoted late-life companion William (Bill) Barber preceded her in death.
Helen will be remembered for many things, including her impeccable fashion sense, keen mind, adventurous spirit, ferociously competitive nature, relentless work ethic, and unbreakable determination. But the memories her family will carry in their hearts are:
– Her boisterous, knee-slapping laugh
– Her curly red hair that finally faded white
– Her loaded .22, always ready for whatever critters might need shooting
– Her lifelong athleticism, which let her play catch and ping-pong late into her nineties
– Her role as first mate (one of three) on the houseboat that her husband and brother-in-law built by hand, using salvaged 250-gallon oil tanks as pontoons
– Her mixture of admiration and judgment for all dogs
– Her love for Mountain Dew, which she drank from its invention to her death bed
– Her aggressive winning strategies in games of Spoons her family played after every holiday meal
– Her delicious yet potent raspberry cordial she made each year, from berry to bottle
– Her endless delight at the way her red hair popped up in her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, over and over
Join the family for visitation from 9:00 – 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, September 21 at Faith Lutheran Church in Andover. Funeral services will follow immediately thereafter, with burial at Oakland Cemetery, followed by a luncheon at the church. A limited visitation is also available on Friday from 3:00 – 6:00 p.m. at Pape Funeral Home for those unable to attend on Saturday. (I.e., If you want to see Helen’s far-flung crop of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, redheaded and otherwise, Saturday is your day.)
Online condolences may be left at www.papefh.com. The family requests that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to The Sawmill Museum in Clinton, Iowa. Using a final gift that Helen made to the museum, the family invites people who haven’t visited the museum yet to go ask for “The Helen Cotton Special,” for free admission.