Helen Elizabeth Topping (1910-1989) was born in Seattle, Washington-the second child of George and Mae Rummens. She entered the University of Washington where she was a fine arts major in piano and voice. She studies there until 1930 when she married Norman Topping, a premed student at the University who had been accepted at the University of Southern California School of Medicine.
The new Mrs. Topping had promised her father she would earn at least a bachelor's degree, so she enrolled at UCLA, which had just moved to its West Los Angeles campus. Because UCLA did not have a School of Fine Arts at that time, she entered the school of Education as a music major. After making up more than a year of credit lost in the transfer of schools, she graduated in 1932.
Two years later, the Toppings' first child, Brian, was born during Norman Topping's senior year of Medical School at USC. Upon Dr. Topping's graduation, he was accepted into the U.S. Public Health Service and took his year of internship at the Marine Hospital in San francisco and then his residency at the Marine Hospital in Seattle.
A year of five different station transfers followed, the last one to the National Institutes of Health, then located in Washington, D. C. The Toppings' second child, Linda Elizabeth, was born there in 1938.
The family spent several happy years in suburban Bethesda, Maryland. Mrs. Topping was deeply involved in volunteer work, a garden club and school activities. After a long hiatus, she resumed her piano studies.
Her husband, who had risen to the rank of Assistant Surgeon General and Associate Director of the National Institutes of Health, resigned from the Public Health Service in 1952 to become Vice President of Medical Affairs at the University of Pennsylvania. And Mrs. Topping became a student again. During their six years at Penn, she studied French and Italian and then art history, architectural design, basic design and interior design.
USC beckoned in 1958, making Norman Topping its seventh president. He became chancellor in 1970 and chancellor emeritus in 1980. The Toppings remained in Los Angeles and continued to be an integral part of the University. Mrs. Topping's love for two of her fields of study, architecture and fine arts, was manifested through the establishment of the Helen Topping Book Fund endowment in 1982. It continues to support students and the new library in perpetuity.
Helen Topping considered the establishment of the Helen Topping Library of Architecture and Fine Arts the culmination of her "wonderful life." For the University, it is a lasting tribute to her memory.
