About Helen
Helen Ford Wallace never met a party that she didn’t like and thinks that Oklahoma City hosts and hostesses have a real flair for entertaining.
Through the years, she has attended unique and distinctive buffet dinners, benefit luncheons, holiday events, seated dinners, birthday parties, baby showers and wedding showers involving eight to eight hundred people.
During her history at the Oklahoman, she has worked with several Society editors including the late Margaret Harrison, and Joan Gilmore. Helen’s mission, as handed down to her from these editors, was to report on the best of the parties. She has written about several generations of families in the Sunday Oklahoman Life Section and has enjoyed covering party-going children whose parents have been on the social scene for years.
Readers, locally and statewide, follow this column regularly, because they are really, really interested in People and Parties in Oklahoma. They get new ideas for their own parties.
Helen is a University of Oklahoma graduate. She attended Oklahoma City University for master’s degree work.
She began writing for The Oklahoman as a teen correspondent for the Oklahoma City Times in 1957. Her awards include the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame (2007), Public School Foundation Wall of Fame (2005), Oklahoma City University Dulaney Browne Libraries Awards (2010), Women In Communications By Liners Award (1999), Panhellenic Woman on the Year (2006) and Oklahoma Hospitality Club Ladies In the News ( 1999).
Currently she is Features writer and columnist for The Oklahoman and creates, maintains and authors a blog which includes weekly web casts. She is online web editor for the People/Events page on NewsOk. She takes party photos for the Life section and for her Parties Extra! blog.
Community activities through the years include Beaux Arts Ball Court advisor, Past Beaux Arts Ball Chairman; Past Junior League President and Corresponding Secretary and Past Recruitment Advisor for Delta Delta Delta Sorority. She has also volunteered for the Red Earth Festival and has been a member of the Associates Council for the University of Oklahoma. She is on the Community Advisory Board for the Oklahoma City Junior League.
