age 97, of Birmingham, passed to her eternal home January 4, 2007. Born May 14, 1909, Helen was a native of Dolomite,Alabama, and a 1927 graduate of Hueytown High School. She longed to be a teacher, but instead, went to business school and acquired bookkeeping skill put to good use when she became bookkeeper and general office manager of her husband's business, Birmingham Scale Company. Helen is fondly remember as a loving wife and homemaker, mother, grandmother,and great-grandmother. She welcomed her family into her home and entered wholeheartedly into the activities of her grandchildren, exploring with them the meadow and pond on the forty acres of land where she Mr. Bell built a home and where they were neighbors of her late sister and brother-in-law, Mame and Elwin Ward, Sr. Helen was an active member of several churches in the area. She, with Mr. Bell organized prayer meeting, scavenger hunts, cookouts, hay rides, and many other activities for the youth of Central Park Baptist Church with whom they loved to work. She was a fixture on Friday nights at the church youth house, cooking hamburgers and helping create a Christian atmosphere where teenagers could gather after Friday night ball games. She worked in Bible Shool, Sunday School, training union, and produced the you the newspaper "The Church Mouse" for many years. after moving to south shades Crest Road in 1962, Helen was a active in Macedonia Baptist, now South shades Crest Baptist Church, and Green Valley Baptist Church in Hoover. She taught Sunday school for over fifty years kept the Sunday school record, and served as pianist of her department. In the last years of her life, as she was able, Helen joined and attended Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian church with her daughter and granddaughter. Helen was an avid family historian, renowned for her scrapbooks, her contributions to the Hoover Historical Society about her family's pioneer roots in the Shelby County-Helena area, where her family members were early settlers and founding members of the now Trace Crossings Baptist Church. Helen has written several family histories to share with family and friends, "Growing Up in Alabama and Helen of the Old House." Mrs. Bell was preceded in death by her husband of 64 years, Arvin Louis Bell. She is survived by her son and daughter-in-law, Donald Louis and Jackie Baker Bell of Kansas City, Missouri; daughter, Martha B. Ralls of Birmingham; six grandchildren; ten great grandchildren; two great-great grandchildren; and numerous nieces and nephews. Funeral services will be held on January 8, 2007, at 11:00 am at Valhalla Chapel, with Reverend Gerald Stephens, Jr. officiating. Burial will follow at Valhalla Cemetery. Visitation will be Sunday,January 7, 2007 from 5:30pm till 8:00pm at Valhalla. Pallbearers will be grandchildren Don L. Bell of Falls Church, Virginia; Richard Ralls II of Plano, Texas; Martha Ann Ralls of Birmingham; Amanda Bell Muench of Dothan; Lisa Underwood of Birmingham; and Sally Stites of Kansas City, Kansas.