Tirrell (Hellyer) Kimball

FALMOUTH – Tirrell Hellyer Kimball died on July 14, 2025, escaping the ravages of late-stage Alzheimer’s disease and leaving behind a large and diverse collection of people profoundly grateful for her life. She was one day more than 85 when her body closed down.

The Alzheimer’s road was tough for Tirrell, but even as she approached its end, she offered an occasional smile bright enough to warm the souls of all in range. She kept singing, too, not always in tune, but always with pleasure and spirit.

Tirrell was born in Puyallup, Wash., on July 13, 1940, the third daughter of David and Constance Hellyer. As a child, she lived at various times in Lakewood and Eatonville, both in Washington, and Chicago, Ill. She attended the schools of Lakewood, Wash., graduating from Clover Park High School in 1958. She then followed her two sisters to Mills College, in Oakland, Calif., and graduated from there in 1962.

That summer she visited a sister in New York City, N.Y. and met Richard “Rick” Kimball, who was interning at Newsweek magazine. The two spent just three weeks of the next nine months in close enough proximity to be together, but that was enough to convince them that they were a match. They married in December, 1963, and so began the 61-plus years of their partnership. They would never look back, and they would never spend much time analyzing their marriage. It was what it was, and what it was, was wonderful. They belonged together. They were one, living proof that one plus one equals one.

When they married, Tirrell had been teaching 4th grade in Seattle, Wash. and Rick was a lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force, with orders to report in January to a base in southern Italy. Tirrell followed him to Europe as soon as he could find suitable housing. Once there, Tirrell served as an almost full-time substitute teacher at the base school.

In 1968, Rick applied for jobs in both Seattle, Wash. and Portland. The Guy Gannett papers of Portland said yes, and so he and Tirrell moved east, where Tirrell became a teacher again, this time in the 4th grade of the North School on Congress Street in Portland.

After a year of that, the couple’s first son, David, moved into their lives, and Tirrell left teaching behind. When their second son, Stephen, arrived in 1970, she opted for part-time work, beginning with a job as a graphic artist on the Gorham campus of what is now the University of Southern Maine.

In 1971, the four Kimballs first attended a service at the Allen Avenue Unitarian Universalist Church of Portland, and they quickly became fully involved with that institution. Tirrell put her teaching background to work leading religious education (RE) programs, and soon accepted part-time employment as a professional director of religious education (DRE), a position she would hold for 27 years.

Tirrell was a whirlwind of a DRE. A lover of dancing who had married a lead-footed man, she turned her job into dance. People loved watching as she zoomed around on Sunday mornings from one classroom to another, pausing only briefly to dash into the sanctuary and sing an anthem with the choir. Her RE program grew in response to her zooming, grew to include more than 100 kids and help push the church into an expansion of its building. Her denomination took note, and in 2003 honored her with the national Angus H. MacLean Award for Excellence in Religious Education. Her own church took note as well, and in 2010 named her Director of Religious Education Emerita.

During her DRE tenure, Tirrell began to write new RE curricula that other churches asked to use. Rick at this time was working for an educational publishing company, so the couple combined their talents and created the Green Timber Publishing Company, which for years developed fresh curricula that would impact Unitarian Universalist RE programs throughout the country and beyond.

Tirrell’s involvement in Allen Avenue extended well beyond the RE program. She sang in the choir. She was active in the church social action program, which won its own denominational award in 2003. She was a leader of the church’s annual retreat at the Ferry Beach Retreat and Conference Center in Saco. She helped organize a memorable prom for the church and its friends. She was a regular member of the church group that served monthly meals at the Preble Street Soup Kitchen. There she was always quick at volunteering to assist any client who needed to be hand-fed. And she did much more. She personified the UU dictum that “service is our prayer.”

For years after Tirrell’s retirement, she and Rick led the middle school RE program at Allen Avenue. They especially delighted in conducting, sometimes by themselves and sometimes with others, the youth version of Unitarian Universalist sexuality education programs.

Gradually and sadly, as the years passed by, Tirrell began to show signs of cognitive decline. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in January of 2019. She cried when she heard that diagnosis, but from that moment on, she showed remarkable acceptance. “It is what it is,” she said, over and over again. When it was time to stop driving, she accepted with relief. When it was time for her to enter a memory care facility, she looked around Avita of Stroudwater, in Westbrook, and said, “This is nice.” When it was time for others to feed her, as she had once fed others, she accepted. When a series of falls meant she must spend most of her time in a wheelchair or bed, she accepted that, too.

She accepted much about the world, even as she sought to improve it. “How Can I Keep from Singing” was a song that fed her soul. She sang from childhood on. She sang in her church choir.

And even as she lay in Avita and accepted hospice care, she could be heard crooning. She could be seen to be speaking, too. Although aphasia had robbed her of most words, she sometimes clearly mouthed the words “I love you.”

Tirrell also played flute, until (“It is what it is”) arthritis prevented that, often concluding Allen Avenue Christmas Eve services by playing “Silent Night” with congregants humming and candles glowing around her.

Before Tirrell moved to Avita, she and Rick lived in the OceanView retirement community of Falmouth. They had previously owned homes in Falmouth and New Gloucester, but Tirrell never forgot her Northwest years. She frequently traveled with her husband and sons to visit the family of her birth in Washington state. There they often stayed on the Hellyer Ranch in Eatonville, Wash., a tract of land where Tirrell felt rooted and that her parents eventually donated to the city of Tacoma, Wash., as a wildlife park known today as Northwest Trek.

The Kimball family extends to all the caregivers of the Cedars’ Mindful Connections program, of Avita, and of Compassus Hospice both blessings and thanks for their loving care through Tirrell’s final two years. Service seems to be their prayer, too. Special thanks go as well to all who visited her, all who sang with her, all who drew pictures with her, all who prayed for her, and all who cared for her.

Tirrell’s survivors include her husband; her sons and their wives; her two sisters, her sister-in-law and partner; and her five grandchildren; plus hundreds, maybe thousands, of all the kids and adults whose lives she touched and improved.

The word “survivors” suggest that Tirrell is gone but no, she is not, she lives on in the hearts of so many.

The next time you gaze at the sky on a clear night, you will see a fresh and brightly shining star, for that’s the way of the cosmos. Life to death, and death to life. Eternally so.

A ceremony celebrating Tirrell’s life will be held at the Allen Avenue church on an early fall date still to be determined.

If you are moved to send flowers, please instead make a donation in Tirrell’s name to the Allen Avenue Unitarian Universalist Church. You can do so by clicking the donate button on the

church website at

https://www.a2u2.org/.