I am pleased to find a journalist in the family, and more pleased that this family journalist was a woman. Helen Augusta "Gussie" [Packard] DuBois, my great-grandaunt, was a feature writer for the Pasadena Star-News in the 1920s and 1930s.(1) She was born in Chautauqua County, New York in 1851, probably in New Harmony Township. She died in Los Angeles County, California, in 1941, probably in Pasadena, where she lived for many years. She married Louis Stanley DuBois in 1880. He died in 1911 and she never remarried.
She contributed stories to a number of California newspapers and magazines, and was also known as a poet. Speaking to her broad range of interests, she also wrote for religious publications, being a member of a Presbyterian congregation, and was known for her celebrity interviews conducted with "skill and tact."(2)
For the funeral of her friend Nellie M. Russ, head of Pasadena's public library, Gussie DuBois wrote a poem she titled "Friends."
To be a friend, O strong and subtle power
That so demands the best the soul has known.
Life has no greater honor for its dower:
I hold it higher than to win a throne.(3)
(1) "Helen Root Wolf New Organist-Director of Local Christian Church," San Pedro (California) News-Pilot, 28 Aug. 1941
(2) "Mrs. Gussie Packard DuBois Dies at Home," Bloomington (Illinois) Daily Pantograph, 17 Sept. 1941, Page 2.
(3) "Noted Librarian is Laid to Rest," Pasadena Post, 3 Nov 1927, Page13.
