The world lost a beautiful soul when Naomi Helene Willis (née Brammell) passed away peacefully on June 13, 2024, in the Boulder Community Health facility surrounded by members of her loving family. Naomi Helene Brammell, born May 16, 1933, in Storrs, Connecticut, was the daughter of Naomi Helene and Paris Roy Brammell and older sister to Homer (“Hank”) L. Brammell.
Helene was always the name she used throughout her life to distinguish herself from her mother. Helene grew up in Willimantic, CT and graduated from Windham High School in 1951. She then attended Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona.
While in Arizona, Helene competed in The Miss Coconino County Scholarship Program. She did not compete for the Miss Arizona title due to her marriage engagement. She married James Stanley Arlington in Okmulgee, Oklahoma in December 1952.
That marriage produced two children, James (Jim) Duncan Arlington, and Stanley (Stan) Brammell Arlington. After stints in Gilroy, CA and Odessa, TX the family moved to Oklahoma City, OK, where Helene received her Bachelor of Education degree from the University of Central Oklahoma. In 1962 the family moved to Boulder, Colorado where Helene began a stellar teaching career with the Boulder Valley School District (BVSD) teaching first-grade at Mapleton Elementary School.
She also taught other grades at Mapleton and as a team teacher for 5th and 6th grades with Jane Daniels. The family moved to Stillwater, OK in the summer of 1967 where .
