Helen Wilshire Walsh Papers

Collection

Identifier: A.1995.21

Scope and Contents

This collection is a single box series comprised of correspondence, invitations, photographs, newspaper clippings, and awards. The majority of the collection is focused around correspondence, awards, and occurrences during and immediately following World War II, but includes accolades and materials from her time working with Rehabilitation International, her time on the National Council for Disability, and the endowment of a lectureship at Georgetown University in her deceased second husband's, Colonel William J. Walsh, name.

Dates

Creation: 1918-1992

Conditions Governing Access

Access to this collection is unrestricted

Biographical / Historical

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"Helen Payne Wilshire Walsh was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1898. She attended Miss Kendrick's School, Briarcliff Collece and the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. She and her first husband, Joseph Wilshire, moved to Greenwich in 1923 and to Round Hill in 1926.

She was the first campaign chairman of the Community Chest and Council and the first woman to become president of a Chest. During the Second Wrold War she was involved in the third War Bond Drive in Greenwich, was a member of the Connecticut State War Fund Board, and was a director of the Aiken, South Carolina, Red Cross.

Mrs. Walsh has also been president of the women's board of Greenwich Hospital, cie-chairman of the Greenwich Republican Town Committee, and the first Republican State Central Committeewoman from this district. She is a past chairman of Rehabilitation International, USA, and a former vice-resident of Rehabilitation International, North America. For her contributions in the rehabilitation field, she has been awarded the Dr. Howard Rusk Award, the Dr. Henry Kessler Award, and the State Easter Seal Award. She has also received medals from Israel and Portugal and been honored by Presnident Anwar Sadat of Egypt.

She ahs been a member of the White House Conference on the Aging and was appointed by President Nixon to the National Advisory Council on Rehabilitation. She also serves as a member of the President's Committee on the Empolyment of the Handicapped. Mrs. Walsh is a trustee of the Nathaniel Witherell Hospital and has recently retired as a co-trustee of the New York University Medical Center." (Reproduced from the Greenwich Oral History Project "The Republican Party, Community Involvement, and Life in Round Hill 1923-1980" an oral history interview with Helen Payne Wilshire Walsh, 1981)