After graduation, she moved to Princeton, New Jersey, where she lived with Woodrow and Ellen Wilson and their family while attending Evelyn College for Women.

Helen Woodrow Bones moved into the White House in 1913 where her first job as Ellen Wilson's private secretary was to organize tickets for inauguration events.

She worked like a small steam engine plowing through stacks of letters and she still teased and laughed with father, as she had done in the old days…Her room was always a sort of rendezvous; the door was open all day long, and we drifted in and out, sometimes ending the day with an impromptu tea around her fire…Bones played multiple roles in the early Wilson White House; she was part of Ellen's secretarial staff but also her close personal friend and supporter, and she combined many social duties with administrative responsibilities.

[8] Bones shared the role of "surrogate First Lady" with the Wilsons' daughter Margaret, her primary job being to support the grieving widower.

For therapy, the President's doctor suggested that she take up walking and recommended as her companion an elegant widowed socialite and businesswoman named Edith Galt.

[2] In early 1919, Bones moved out of the White House[2] to resume her career as a book publishing editor in New York City.