Helen Ruth Carlson; Senior Citizens Advocate

Helen Ruth Carlson, who worked to improve the living conditions of senior citizens in Ventura County, died Monday in a convalescent hospital after a brief illness. She was 96.

Carlson, who was born Aug. 16, 1901 in Cambridge, Mass., moved to Ventura in 1970 after retiring as an Army administrator in New Jersey, a job she held for 30 years.

During her retirement, Carlson began advocating for improved services for seniors.

In 1980, she helped establish the Ventura County Area Agency on Aging, which helps plan services for seniors. Before then, the county’s agency had been part of a chapter that covers Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.

“I think Ms. Carlson was a person of vision and she recognized the growth in the senior population that was going to occur,” said Colleen House, director of Ventura County Area Agency on Aging, which now serves 104,000 seniors.

As a member of the agency’s advisory council, Carlson also pushed to have a senior citizen center in every city in Ventura County, a goal that has come to fruition. When Carlson arrived in the county there were only three centers--in Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks and Ventura.

Carlson also coordinated much of the entertainment for nursing homes in the county “because she felt that older people needed stimulation and shouldn’t just sit there,” said Carlson’s granddaughter, Marcey Katterman of Greensboro, N.C.

Relatives and co-workers knew Carlson as someone who remained feisty to the end and treasured her independence. House recalled how Carlson even in her 90s took the bus to the agency meetings.

Carlson wasn’t too sympathetic with seniors who made excuses about why they couldn’t do things, Katterman said.

“She was a real character,” Katterman said. “She always used to tell me how she never really liked old people and she was always older than they were. She didn’t like the tricks the little old ladies pulled like saying what’s wrong with them, why they couldn’t do things themselves.”

She is survived by a son, Robert Carlson of Camarillo; granddaughters Katterman, Judith Murphy of Pasadena and Amy Volz of Spotsylvania, Va.; and grandsons David W. Katterman and Robert E. Katterman, both of Asheville, N.C. Carlson was preceded in death by her husband, Robert G. Carlson, in 1954 and daughters Marilyn Carlson in 1936 and Ruth Katterman in 1997.

Visitation is tonight from 5 to 8 p.m. and funeral services are scheduled for 3 p.m. Thursday at the Ted Mayr Funeral Home in Ventura. The Rev. George Reynolds of Our Lady of the Assumption Church in Ventura will officiate.