Dr. Helen Duggar Conwell died Dec. 30, 2016 in Portland, Oregon.
The daughter of Dr. Llewellyn and Ida Morgan Duggar, she was born July 26, 1922 in Mobile, Alabama.
After attending Mobile public schools, she went to Judson College for one year and graduated from the University of Alabama, as a Phi Beta Kappa, in 1942. She received her M.D. degree from Northwestern University, one of only two women in a class of 169.
There followed an internship at St. Luke's Hospital, Chicago, residency in anesthesiology at St. Luke's and a further residency in that specialty at Charity Hospital of New Orleans.
She practiced anesthesiology in Shreveport and New Orleans until her marriage to Capt. David M. Conwell in 1951. Often a trailblazer, she was only the second anesthesiologist in Shreveport - today there are over 60.
The Conwells, in their 53 years together, had an interesting life. They lived first for seven years in Venezuela, where Dr. Conwell had the unusual experience of administering the anesthesia for the successful removal from a man's chest of two five-foot-long arrows that had been shot at him by a member of a primitive jungle tribe, the Motilones, with which civilized man had previously had no contact.
While living and working for three years in Trinidad, she was co-founder of the Planned Parenthood clinic in Port of Spain, believed to have been the first in the Caribbean. (The clinic's first patient had been pregnant 19 times and had 17 living children.)
Transferred back to the United States by Capt. Conwell's employer, Alcoa Steamship Company, the Conwells lived in Mobile, New York (suburban New Jersey), and Washington, D.C. (suburban Maryland). While living in New Jersey Dr. Conwell did post-doctoral study in gerontology at Rutgers University.
In 1979 they retired to Fairhope, Alabama on Mobile Bay's Eastern Shore, where Dr. Conwell served as a vestry member of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, was a director of the Eastern Shore Institute for Lifelong Learning, Meals on Wheels, and Newcomers Club, and was a tutor in English as a second language for the Eastern Shore Literacy Council. She moved to Portland in 2010.
She was a gifted artist in all media she fancied, winner of dozens of national recipe contests, inveterate traveler and all-around Renaissance woman. She remained passionate in her intellectual and personal curiosity about all things and all people around her, until her final hours.
Dr. Conwell was predeceased by her husband; her brother, Lloyd Llewellyn Duggar; and her sister, Mary Morgan Duggar Toulmin.
She is survived by two sons, William Yeates Conwell (Kristen), Benjamin Duggar Conwell (Elizabeth); four grandchildren, Hannah Morgan Conwell, David Andrew Conwell, Ashby Vaughan Conwell Rodriguez and Judson Craig Conwell; and nephews, Llewellyn Toulmin, Hilton Duggar, Preston Duggar and Vaughan Duggar.
A going away party will be held at Willamette View retirement community (12705 S.E. River Road, Portland, OR 97222) on Saturday, Jan. 28 at 3 p.m.
Interment of ashes in Alabama will follow at a future date.
Memorials in lieu of flowers may be made to Wilmer Hall Episcopal Children's Home, 3811 Old Shell Road, Mobile, Alabama 36608-9941, or the charity of one's choice.
