Troutdale’s Helen Otto, 90, founder of historical society, wife of legislator, dies

The Gresham Outlook, Oct 17, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Helen Otto

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Helen Dombkowski Otto, wife and legislative assistant to the late East County senator Glenn Otto, died at Willamette View Manor care center in Milwaukie on Wednesday, Oct. 14, at the age of 90.

A veteran of the Army Nurse Corps in World War II and a founder of the Troutdale Historical Society, Helen will be remembered in a funeral Mass at 11 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 17, at St. Henry Catholic Church, 346 N.W. First St. Private burial will be at Willamette National Cemetery in Portland.

She was interviewed in The Outlook on May 30, 2009, shortly after her 90th birthday. She always enjoyed the notion that Mount St. Helens exploded on her birthday.

She and her husband, Glenn, both Democrats, served in Salem for 20 years before his retirement in 1993. Glenn began his political career as mayor of Troutdale and then was elected to the House and later to the Senate. Legislative couples were common in those days, when a state legislator made only $500 a month, and so the way to make ends meet was to employ a spouse as a legislative assistant.

Of two decades in Salem, she said last May, “We knew so many nice people there…In fact I probably had more Republican friends than Democrats.”

Former Troutdale Mayor Paul Thalhofer remembers Helen for always being there in Glenn’s Salem office “to greet people with a smile and a helpful attitude” and with words of encouragement whenever he needed to meet with Glenn over legislative issues. Together, Helen and Glenn made a “dynamic duo in Salem and East Multnomah County” in and out of the Legislature, Thalhofer says.

“I refer to it as the East County one-two punch” because they worked so closely together, Thalhofer says.

She was born May 18, 1919, in North Granby, Conn., to Peter and Eleanor (Stolarczyk) Dombkowski. Helen graduated from Simsbury High School and earned her nursing degree from St. Francis School of Nursing in Hartford, Conn. She later attended Vanport College and the University of Oregon, receiving her bachelor’s degree.

Three of Helen’s brothers also served in World War II. Helen nursed in military hospitals in Italy, caring for her brother who was injured in the push for Monte Cassino. She was still in Italy when a letter sent to her eldest brother was returned, marked “Killed in Action.” He is buried near Saint-Lo in France.

“We were not near the front line,” she remembered in a 1994 interview about her wartime service, “but we could hear the guns and the noise. We knew when pushes were going on.” She worked in the septic ward, treating soldiers with serious wounds and injuries. “You handled it somehow or other,” she remembered. “They needed help.”

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