JUANITA Lou (Lauesen) HELMS
![Juanita Helms](https://www.alaskawomenshalloffame.org/wp-content/uploads/helms.jpg)
• Assembly, Mayor
• Leadership
Inducted: 2016
Deceased: 2009
JUANITA Lou (Lauesen) HELMS
Juanita Lauesen Helms arrived in Alaska with her family in 1951. They lived briefly in Anchorage, then moved to McKinley National Park in 1952 where the family lived for three years before moving to Fairbanks.
Helms graduated from Lathrop High School and then attended several professional and career training courses as she moved through her career. She married Orville R. Helms in 1962 and they remained together until her demise. They raised their four children in Fairbanks.
Helms started her career as a clerk for Superior Court Judge Jay Rabinowitz, then moved to administrative work at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. As Helm’s family increased, she shifted her focus to the management of family rental properties and volunteer projects with PTAs and neighborhood land-use issues such as transportation and parks. She volunteered on political campaigns where education, public safety and parks impacted families. Helms began her political career as a member of the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly, then as assembly chair and then as borough mayor.
Helms was the first woman to be elected to the mayor’s position, a glass ceiling she was proud to have shattered. Her terms as mayor coincided with the advent of “glasnost” and the thawing of relations between the U.S. and Russia. She was a driving force in building relations between Interior Alaska and Russia.
On Sept. 10, 2015, the Fairbanks borough assembly honored her for 11 years of service and her trusted leadership by naming the borough administrative center, in downtown Fairbanks on the Chena River, the Juanita Helms Administration Center. In the 1990s Helms received recognition for her work building the Carlson Center and supporting the Sister City Commission from the Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown Rotary Club. She also was awarded the Queen Bess Award from the Democratic Party for her open-door leadership in Fairbanks.
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