Helen is an Atchison High School, Atchison, Kansas, graduate and a graduate of Kansas State College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences, Manhattan, Kansas. She was a member of Pi Beta Phi social sorority while at Kansas State College. She taught in the Wakefield, Kansas, schools for one year following her degree at Kansas State College.

The year following her graduation from Kansas State College she spent in Honolulu, Hawaii, with her brother, Albert Mangelsdorf PhD.
--------
Atchison Daily Globe, Atchison, Kansas, December 24, 1934.

Homewood, the home place of the Mangelsdorf family, was the scene of a marriage late yesterday afternoon when Helen, the youngest daughter, and John Robert Porter of Chicago, Illinois, were married. Helen is the sixth daughter and seventh bride to take her nuptial vows at Homewood.

The Rev. W. E. Wheeler read the service yesterday at 5 o'clock in the library, before the fireplace. Sprays of evergreen with blue and silver contrasts, were banked on the fireplace and were used throughout the other downstairs rooms for decoration. Lighted tapers in candlelaubra were placed on the mantle. Preceding the wedding Miss Marguerite Chaffin, vocalist of Manhattan, Kansas, and Mrs. Murl Johnson, pianist, Topeka, Kansas, sorority sisters of the bride at Kansas State College, Manhattan, Kansas, gave two selections.

The bride wore a tailored dress of cocktail blue crepe with long, full sleeves of sky blue crepe. The neck of the dress was fashioned high and was caught with a flat corsage of gardenia. She wore black accessories.

Only the immediate families attended. At the reception, nieces of the bride served: Miss Charlotte Mangelsdorf, Miss Katherine Mangelsdorf, Miss Blanche Mangelsdorf, Miss Marie Schmeiling, Miss Mary Emma Mangelsdorf, Mrs. Eugene Mangelsdorf, Mrs. Hugh Bell, and little Christine Schmeiling. Out of town guests were the groom's parents, Mr. and Mrs. L. F. Porter of Winfield, Kansas; Miss Marguerite Chaffin, Manhattan; Mr. and Mrs. Carl Johnson, Topeka, Kansas; Mr. and Mrs. Marion Stauffer and children, Virginia and Billy, and Miss Roberta Barrett, Marysville, Missouri; Miss Charlotte Mangelsdorf, Miss Katherine Mangelsdorf, Pauline Mangelsdorf and Frank Mangelsdorf, St. Joe, Missouri; Miss Carrie Back, Los Angeles, California.

The bridal couple went to Kansas City, and from there will go to Chicago, Illinois.
--------
Helen married John Robert Porter on December 23, 1934 in Atchison, Kansas.

John died December 18, 1980. Helen married William Francis "Bill" O'Dell on May 16, 1987, at the First Presbyterian Church, Naples, Florida.