Helen Steiner Rice's Poetic Tribute to Rhea Soper Eddy – Feb. 2, 1950

One of the many famous people who were born in Lorain was Helen Steiner Rice.

According to the Images of America Lorain Ohio book (created by what was then called the Black River Historical Society), “Helen Steiner Rice enjoyed writing poetry when she attended Lorain High School and continued that interest all her life.

“She was employed at the Ohio Public Service Co. (later Ohio Edison) and became the director of public relations of the Ohio Committee on Public Utilities Information.

“At a convention, Helen Steiner was introduced to Franklin Rice, a banker, and they married.

“When Mr. Rice died a few years later, Helen was offered a job at the Gibson Greeting Card Co. Her poems began to attract attention and she not only wrote poetry for the company cards, but published books of her poems.

“Born in Lorain in 1900, she died in Cincinnati in 1981.”

Anyway, an example of her poetry appeared on the front page of the Lorain Journal back on February 2, 1950 – 70 years ago yesterday. It was her tribute to her old friend Rhea Soper Eddy, who had passed away in mid-January 1950.

(Rhea Super Eddy was the women’s page editor of the Journal, who for 25 years was the head of the Mary Lee Tucker charity program – which evolved into today’s Morning Journal Clothe-A-Child program.)

Here is the article and poem. The poem is quite lovely.

For more information on Helen Steiner Rice, here is the link to her entry on the Ohio History Central website.

Helen Steiner Rice’s first collection of poetry,
published in 1967