Helen (Betty) Elizabeth Tank was born in Chatham, New York, the daughter of Stella Bayley and Morton R. Tank. She graduated from Russell Sage College in Troy, New York (B.A. 1931), attended Connecticut State College, and earned a master's degree from Columbia University. While in England on a walking tour, she was stranded by the outbreak of World War II, and in 1940 she was hired as a housemother at the American College for Girls in Istanbul, Turkey, where she remained for three years. During the 1940s she traveled to Syria, Palestine, and Egypt as well as in Africa and South America. Tank continued to travel widely throughout the rest of her life and was a lifelong member of the Appalachian Mountain Club and the Hobos Association of America. She taught in one-room schoolhouses in Colorado and Wyoming during the 1940s and 1950s and later taught third grade in Coxsackie, New York before retiring in 1971.
From the description of Papers of Helen Elizabeth Tank, 1925-2006 (inclusive). (Harvard University). WorldCat record id: 637627078
