Helen Ross—1890-1978

Helen Ross died on August 10, 1978, in Washington, D.C. Those of us who had the good fortune to know her personally over the years have lost a sincere and loving friend, a gifted teacher, and a psychoanalytic colleague possessed of an uncommon wisdom which she shared generously and with modesty. She was also a woman widely respected by persons in professional fields other than psychoanalysis for her many contributions to their work. Wide knowledge, vast experience, social consciousness, and a keen respect for the human individual's capacity for psychological growth and creativity characterized her pioneering spirit and the diversity of her work.

Helen Ross was born in 1890 in Independence, Missouri. She attended the public schools there and, in 1907, entered the University of Missouri where she majored in Latin and Education and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Following her graduation in 1911, Helen taught English and Latin in the Independence High School and English to immigrants in a Jewish settlement night school in Kansas City. In 1914, Helen and her older sister established a summer camp for girls in Michigan, a camp that was owned and directed by the Ross sisters for thirty-seven years. In 1916, she resumed high school teaching in Missouri and began graduate work in sociology and economics. The recipient of the Susan B. Anthony Memorial Fellowship at Bryn Mawr College in 1917, she did graduate work in social research there, participating in a study for the Quartermaster's Department on the employment of women in making Army uniforms for World War I. Though awarded another fellowship in 1918 to work toward a Ph.D. in social research, she decided instead to take a position as field agent for the United States Railroad Administration to study the working conditions of the vast number of women employed in all branches of railroad work