When Helen Howard Atherstone was born on 24 January 1912, in Mill Valley, Marin, California, United States, her father, Tom Edmund Atherstone, was 40 and her mother, Helen Howard O'Neill, was 27. She married Owen Austin Kearns on 21 February 1940, in Clark, Nevada, United States. She lived in Columbia, Boone, Missouri, United States in 1959. She died on 4 July 1999, in Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, United States, at the age of 87, and was buried in Morgan, Morgan, Utah, United States.