By Gertrude Reagan

Helen Carter King, frequent contributor of poetry to the Town Crier in earlier years, will celebrate her 98th birthday on Monday.

Though in poor health, she continues to reside in her own home and amuse everyone around her. A resident of Los Altos since 1956, she has witnessed history.

In 1957, while sitting on a hill at night near the Los Altos Golf & Country Club, she saw the most fascinating twinkling spot make its way across the night sky. The next morning, newspapers announced that the Russians had launched Sputnik, the first manmade object to achieve orbit in space.

Her specialty was writing sonnets. She was alive to the advances in human knowledge and the fate of us all, as evidenced in this 1982 poem, published in “Poet, an International Monthly.”

The Neglected Space

Above unwary heads a rocket roars

Off to hunting fields on the edge of skies,

A horse of steel, racing on cloudy moors,

Chasing a hidden and illusive prize.

Back on earth at every tracking center

The Probers watch their latest rocket fall.

(Safe in silence where no threat may enter,

Moves the mighty Planner of it all.)

But while we sleep, computers calculate

Expensive missions for another probe,

Whose abstract findings will be shared too late

To help the helpless on a teeming globe.

How long will man neglect the inner space

Where lies the future of the human race?

Mrs. King grew up in Washington, D.C., where she played violin and heard a premiere performance by Stravinsky. Early on, her poetry was recognized by publication in _The Saturday Review. She was a flapper during the Jazz Age and prohibition.

After marrying a geologist in 1932, she lived in remote areas in Texas and Tennessee, among other places, before coming to California. Her husband, Philip B. King, worked at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park.

Reagan is a relative of Helen Carter King.