Staff Writer

When she was young and working in the office of Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, Sue Helms said she couldn’t fathom a career in education.

Helms, 65, who retires as principal of Blue Point Primary School at the end of this month, said she’ll be out of town when the next school year starts because it will be so hard to imagine not being at school.

“I told my husband, Carl, on the last days of August and in early September, we need to be someplace else,” Helms said.

Someplace else has been on the agenda for a while, Helms said; her husband retired from the University of Southern Maine about four years ago.

For the last 14 years, Helms has been a teacher, building superintendent and principal at the school on Pine Point Road, capping a teaching career that began in Istanbul about 34 years ago.

“He has been waiting patiently,” Helms said of their plans to travel, first on a journey to Egypt later this fall.

Helms said staff at the school will likely post a map to show where the Helmses will travel – teachers, students and parents said Helms has left her mark on the school as well.

First-grade teacher Amy Taylor said Helms made sure to know each of the nearly 275 pupils at the K-2 school.

“I’m going to miss her support, her door is always open for all of us,” Taylor said.

Susan Trego said she has a daughter who is moving on to Wentworth Intermediate School in the fall and a son who will enter Blue Point Primary School as a kindergartener. She said he is sorry he will miss Helms and her touch with students.

“She is a very sweet, caring woman who is always there to listen,” said Trego.

Being there to listen and act was very important to Trego, she said, because her daughter has food allergies.  Accommodating her and preventing anaphylactic shock required changes Helms was willing to make, Trego said.

The career path to Blue Point School crossed continents and seas, Helms said. A native of Waltham, Mass., she said she grew up in Connecticut determined not to become a teacher because it was a career people seemed to expect of her.

Instead, she studied political science at American University in Washington, D.C., got a job in Humphrey’s office at about the time of the 1964 presidential election won by President Lyndon Johnson over challenger Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz.

Helms said she then joined the Peace Corps and was stationed in Turkey, where she met her husband.

After their Peace Corps tour ended, the couple bought a 40-foot sailboat in England, had it outfitted on the Mediterranean island of Malta, and operated a charter service based on the Greek island of Rhodes.

When British insurer Lloyds of London stopped underwriting policies on Mediterranean charters, Helms said the couple sold the boat and returned to America.

“We wanted to get reacquainted with our families,” Helms said. After living in Tennessee, the couple, now with two children, moved to Maine when Carl Helms landed at job with the Biddeford School Department.

Helms said she opened a nursery school in Sanford and began taking education courses.

“I was taking night courses to have adult conversations,” Helms said.

She earned her teaching certification and taught at St. Thomas School in Sanford and Acton Elementary School before coming to Scarborough.

In the 14 years at Blue Point, Helms said she tried to encourage as much staff input as possible when determining policies and procedures and never grew weary of the children she was serving.

“I love little kids. What comes out of them is often unfiltered and innocently hilarious,” Helms said.

The search for Helms’ replacement has not started, but she is certain about what her replacement will face

“They are coming to a plum of a school,” she said.

Staff writer David Harry can be reached at 282-4337, ext. 219.