 Helms operated Southern Foods Company.His son, United States Army Major Jesse L. Helms, Jr. (c. 1946-2013), worked in the company too until it was sold to PYA Monarch, after which the junior Helms was employed as an investment broker and insurance agent.Helms and his wife, the former Louise Phyllis Hunnicutt (1914-2008), a native of Maryville in Blount County in eastern Tennessee, also had two daughters, Ann H. Eastland of Greenville and Doris Louise Blair (1937-2006), a victim of cancer.