Search for Helen is Laid to Rest

I wrote a post on this some years ago.

About a dozen years ago I found a 1917 diary in a south Lansing, MI flea market. It was a lot of money but I was very intrigued and paid $15 for the diary. The author was a young student teacher named Helen Korngold of St Louis, MO. She was a vibrant, intelligent woman with strong family ties. I felt I knew Helen from her diary, and did genealogy research to find out more about her. I have her family tree on ancestry.com.

Helen Sarah Korngold Herzog

I made a series of small, page like quilts that included scanned images of her diary pages, and the quilt appeared at the Women's Historical Center as part of a small quilt show.

After all these years, I have finally found out what happened to Helen and how her diary came to be in Lansing! She showed up on another family tree on ancestry.com. I had all the information up to the late 1930s, but this tree had a spouse and death date and place.

In 1936 she was teaching in a St. Louis high school. In 1940 she appears in a Ithica, NY city directory married to Frtiz Herzog, who became a well known mathematician. By 1945 they were in East Lansing and Fritz was a professor at Michigan State University. He has a Wikipedia page!

Helen died at age 90 in 1988, and Fritz died in 2001 at age 98. Because they married late in life, they had no children and the diary was likely sold off with other personal items. And so I found the diary shortly after, and read it, and Helen, at least for me, was alive again.

Growing up I loved biographies. And as a young adult started to enjoy reading diaries, including Samuel Pepys, which I have read in its entirety. I kept a diary starting in junior high through high school, and off and on throughout my early adulthood. I find diaries fascinating.

I had once hoped to find a family member who would want the diary. In the past I have tracked down heirs and sent them ephemera or letters that were in my grandfather's papers. I feel that everything has a proper home. Now, it appears the diary is mine and some day I will donate it to its proper resting place.

The Helen Korngold Quilt

Helen Korngold Quilt

Close to 10 years ago I found a 1919 diary in a little flea market shop in south Lansing. It was a pricey $15, but it was completely filled and the first entry compelled me to read more.

“Rise 11:30 AM! Oh, such a spiffy time last night: a regular N.Y. Eve. All dolled up in stain clown suit. E.E. proposed—tough luck! Fellows came at 3 AM today—Sam, Dewey, Morris and Sumner Shapiro. Dewey’s Bostonian friend called. We had lots of fun. All good fellows. I’m sleepy—too much champagne!”

The diary was written by Helen Korngold of St Louis, MO.

Helen's photo as a teacher in a school yearbook

Helen was studying to be a teacher. Her history professor offered a Helen fellowship and a position as his private secretary. Helen was a student teacher at the Wellston School and at Maplewood High. She did not like teaching at Wellston. After teaching there as a substitute she regretted not accepting the position at Maplewood High. “Wells came out he said I made a successful teacher, said I understood children.” After graduation she taught at the Wellston School.

Helen wrote about WWI solders, including Dewey Pierre Flambert who won the Distinguished Cross and Legion of Honor, and in 1920 was listed on the census as a Private First Class in the U. S. Army General Hospital in Colorado. She was quite smitten with Dewey while he visited St. Louis, and sought after information about him after he left for Kansas City, then New Mexico, on his way to the coast. “Dewey certainly caused a sensation,” she wrote, “Beat it with $20 gloves and overcoat –I should worry. He was best company I ever had!”

Her special friend was Sumner Shapiro. “He’s lots of fun,” she wrote. She shared several favorite books with him, “Without Benefit of Clergy” (which he did not care for) and “Return of the Native”.  They visited the War Exposition. “He’s a nice fellow! A good teaser. He’s a Bostonian propagandist. I love St. Louis!”

Helen went to chop suey joints, ‘slummed it’ by visiting ‘low class cafes’ like Hop Alley, and danced at the Arcadia. She was up late, rose late, and took afternoon naps to keep up. One night found Helen ‘joy riding’ with Morris Block, her brother Karol, and Sumner, “Morris with his feet hanging out of the machine once or twice & Sumner behaving like a postman and Karol speeding.” 

Along with her music studies and band participation, Helen enjoyed basketball, swimming and canoeing—but most of all loved to dance. She enjoyed going to the amusement park at Forest Park Highlands, once home to the largest roller coaster, The Comet.

Clothes were important. At the Union Masked Ball with Sumner, Helen dressed as Cleopatra in a ‘wicked’ beaded dress in lavender and yellow with black and white. She describes buying a dark blue beaded georgette dress, a peach blow evening dress, black jersey silk petticoats, silk stockings, a green silk dress with silver lace, a blue suit trimmed in fur, suede pumps, dresses in black tricolate and blue velvet, and white georgette plainly embroidered.

On December 31 she climbed the Statue of Liberty That evening she heard ‘La Forza del Destino’ performed by Enrico Caruso and Rosa Ponselle. She had to visit "Lord & Taylor, Altman’s, Macys, etc.” and bought a seal ‘cootie’ hat.

“This certainly has been a most exciting and pleasant year for me. If grandpa had only lived it would have been perfect. Wishing myself and all those I love happiness—Helen Korngold

I researched about Helen's life, using ancestry.com and St. Louis genealogy website. In 1920 Helen was living in St. Louis, MO with her family. Jacob B. Korngold was 56 and a manufacturer who was born in Austria. His work took him on many travels. Helen's beloved brother was Karol Abraham, who became a lawyer after his service in WWI.

I decided to make a make a quilt for Helen. I scanned diary pages and printed them on fabric. The quilt is made to look like pages of a book. The diary page scans are surrounded by a crazy quilt border incorporating old handkerchiefs, lace, old buttons, and scans of postcards of Helen's Alma Mater,  Central High, and other St. Louis scenes. The pages are hung together by strips of lace. And empty ‘frame’ is missing Helen’s picture as I did not find one until recently.

The quilt appeared at the Women’s Historical Museum in Lansing, MI as part of a juried show created by the Capital City Quit Guild.