Helen Streu, a stalwart member of the Catholic Church, died July 21 of lung cancer at her home in Haines. She was 81.

"She was a strong presence, a strong supporter of the church and a believer," said parishioner Dick Flegel.

Deacon Vince Hansen eulogized Streu as formidable, planting a garden with enough extra starts to give away last spring and attending church a week before her death. "Helen spent all of her dying time living," he said.

She used a chainsaw until a recent illness and went moose hunting two years ago. "I asked who was going to help her, and she said, 'Nobody'," Hansen said.

A light moment during Streu's funeral was a fitting send off, said longtime friend George Ann Smith. "Helen and I always had fun together no matter what we did."

Smith and Streu met as new arrivals and raised families together. "I trusted her and she trusted me. All the things that I have done wrong in my life have gone with Helen. I told her everything," Smith said.

Hansen said Streu "spoke quite negatively" about childhood experiences in the Catholic Church, but remained a voice for change within the church. "She never gave up on it. She always saw the good in it." Her frank and thoughtful poems were published in Catholic periodicals.

Helen Mary Marsh was born in Plentywood, Mont., on Nov. 15, 1932, the sixth and youngest child of poor farmers Bernard and Elizabeth Marsh.

Her father was "somewhat of a highway man and a drifter," said daughter Lisa Flory. Streu was raised in Annandale, Minn., attended teacher training school and taught a year in a one-room schoolhouse, but didn't like it. "She was living with a family who prohibited her from dancing at the Grange Hall because it was 'unseemly,'" Flory said. Streu moved to Minneapolis, became a waitress and "did all the dancing she wanted," her daughter said. She married Annandale farming neighbor Jack Streu, then serving in the U.S. Air Force, in Myrtle Beach, S.C., on June 8, 1959.

Following his discharge she helped put him through college waitressing. Once he earned a degree in petroleum engineering, they headed for Alaska. They were stuck in Haines Junction, Y.T. during the 1964 earthquake, but when they drove through the walls of snow into the green Chilkat Valley, they decided Haines was home. Her husband got a job at the tank farm, and Streu's only child, Lisa, was born here in 1965. Streu was a homemaker who occasionally tended bar and waited tables.

Streu worked alongside her husband building a log home off Small Tracts Road from trees they cut on their property and finished the inside mostly herself. "Every piece of trim, sheet rocking, she built all the cupboards from a kit," Flory said. In 1973 Jack's work took the family to South Korea. In 1977 they built a home in Willow with views of Mount McKinley.

Jack Streu died in 1989. Four years later, Streu married Bill Baird of Haines. "She joked that it was 'Dependence Day' from now on," her daughter said.

The couple returned to Haines in 1994, where they helped care for Streu's grandson. "It was great (my son) had that comfort of someone to snuggle with while I was at work," Lisa said. Baird died in 2004. Streu's niece Michelle Byer and husband Michael lived with her for several years after that. "Family always came first. Her love of family and God," Lisa Flory said.

Streu was also a longtime Legion Auxiliary member and American Legion bartender, enjoyed the company of her husky Oscur for 18 years, and wrote and published poetry her whole life. During the last 10 years she devoted much time to her church.

Helen Streu leaves daughter Lisa Flory and grandson Jack Flory of Haines; sister Harriette Scherer of Melrose, Minn .; niece Michelle Byer and Michael Byer of Juneau; and numerous nieces and nephews.