History and lore
Helen was born in Ohio in 1922 or early 1923, while her parents, George Dewey Malott and Annie Luiza South, were married. Her parents divorced before she was two, and in April 1924 her mother married Jay Orin Kinner. Helen grew up with her stepfather’s surname: in April 1930 the census found her, aged 7 and at school, as “Helen Kinner,” living with her divorced mother and her little half-brother in the home of her grandparents, Lowell and Priscilla South, in Union Township, Warren County.
Her mother married again in 1932, to Bufford C. Griffin, and the family lived around Dayton. Helen married Robert Gallagher (or Gallaher) and had two sons. She later lived in Oklahoma, and moved to the Tampa Bay area of Florida about 1987; her mother’s 1972 obituary already names her as “Mrs. Robert Gallaher” of Tampa.
Helen M. Gallagher died at Tampa General Hospital on Monday, 18 March 1991, aged 68. She was survived by her two sons, a half-brother and a half-sister, and her funeral was arranged by the F. T. Blount funeral home of Lutz, Florida.
Her father’s family knew of her, but no one spoke about it openly, and no one knew why George’s first marriage did not last. Years ago, before Leroy Malott died in 1998, a devoted family researcher wrote to his son Mark that George had a daughter named Helen, and Leroy confirmed it: he knew his father had a daughter by that name. But neither Leroy nor his brothers, Robert, Ray and George Thomas, ever met their half-sister. In 2026 her life was finally traced, through the 1930 census and her own obituary.