Helen Janice Smith went to be with our Lord Dec. 13, 2017. She blessed almost everyone that knew her for more than 100 years.
Janice, (Janiece as she was always known), was born in Cambridge, Idaho, on July 22, 1917. Her father was Oscar M. Denney from Idaho and her mother was Iva Lee Thrall from Nebraska. She is the middle child of five children. She was the last of her generation to pass away.
As was said, Janice was born in the little town of Cambridge. While she was a young child, the family moved to Tamarack, Idaho, where her father worked in the local sawmills. In 1925, when she was 8, they moved to Orofino in a rubber-tired, covered wagon drawn by their team of work horses.
Over the next few years, they moved several times, and ended up living up Elk Creek on the North Fork of the Clearwater River, where she went to school until she graduated from the eighth grade, which was the highest grade that was available in those years in that rural area. During those years, she worked with her mother doing laundry for the Civilian Conservation Corps workers who were stationed at the Elk Creek CCC Camp.
In 1935, she married William Clark Jenks. They had two sons, Donald and Floyd. In 1940, Clark was killed in a hunting accident, leaving her a widow at the age of 23. During the next eight years she and the boys lived with her older sister and brother-in-law, Doris and Willis Grimm, where one of her favorite chores was to drive the team of horses while helping put up hay for the livestock.
In 1948, with her two sons, she moved to Lewiston, where she lived in the same house for the next 66 years. In 1956 she was remarried, to George Eugene Smith, and they had one son, George Lee. Most of her life was devoted to her three sons, giving them a sense of pride for who they were and instilling in them a proper respect for the strong woman that she was.
In March of 2014, after a serious illness, when she could no longer live on her own, she was moved to the home of her son and daughter-in-law, Floyd and Carol Jenks, north of Spirit Lake, Idaho. While there, she loved to watch all the wildlife that could occasionally be seen in their front yard. During this time her favorite adventures included going out for breakfast and on long drives, which she did with her oldest son, Donald.
She was preceded in death by her mother and father; her sisters and brother, Lillian, Doris, Oscar Jr. and Delores; her first husband, William Clark Jenks and second husband George Eugene Smith; and her youngest son, George Lee Smith, who preceded her in death by just one week.
She leaves behind a legacy of smiles and laughter that will never be forgotten. Her survivors are her sons and daughter-in-law, Donald Jenks, and Floyd and Carol Jenks; nine grandchildren: Carol Ann, Donna, Lisa, Tracy, David, Kendell, Scott, Neal and Kimberly; twenty-one great-grandchildren; twenty-three great-great-grandchildren; two great-great-great-grandchildren; and innumerable extended family.
Services will be held at 1 p.m. Thursday at Vassar-Rawls Funeral Home, 920 21st Ave., Lewiston.
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