Davar Iran Ardalan remembers the stories told by her remarkable grandmother, Helen Jeffreys Bakhtiar. Last year, Ardalan and other family members in the United States learned that a mountain and surrounding forest near the city of Isfahan has been named Mount Helen in honor of Helen Bakhtiar for her pioneering work in public health with the Point Four program in some of Iran’s most isolated villages. Bakhtiar talked of her adventures as a wife, mother and hospital nurse in Tehran in the 1930s, and as a public health nurse with the landmark “Point Four” U.S. technical assistance program in the 1950s, where she worked in the Bakhtiari region of southeastern Iran.
