She was born as Helen Newington Wills on October 6, 1905, in Centerville, Alameda County, California (now Fremont), near San Francisco. She was the only child to Clarence A. Wills, a physician and surgeon at Alameda County Infirmary and Catherine Anderson, who had graduated with a B.S. degree in Social Science at the University of California at Berkeley. Her parents had married on July 1, 1904 in Yolo County, California. She lived in the small town of Byron, California, and practiced her tennis game at the Byron Hot Springs resort.