Helen Doig Schmid (May 2, 1921 - May 22, 2002)[1] was a writer for Quality Comics and an editor for Novelty Press during the Golden Age. She later had a successful career in government administration in Illinois.
Life and Career
Helen Doig was born in Minnesota, and she grew up in Arizona and New Jersey. She majored in child psychology at New York University in the class of 1942. After graduation, she became an assistant editor at a New York publications firm. Soon after marrying Alfred Schmid in 1943, she started writing for comics while he served in the Navy during World War II, working from their home in Teaneck, New Jersey. After the war, she left comics and the couple moved to Allentown, Pennsylvania, where she briefly had a role on a radio talk show.
In 1957, she and her husband moved to Glen Ellyn, Illinois. In 1965 and 1969, she was elected to the DuPage County Board before being appointed assistant director of the Illinois Department of Revenue by Governor Richard Ogilvie in 1970. At the time, she was the highest-ranking woman in both Gov. Ogilvie's administration and in any state revenue department.
By 1973, she became known as a consumer advocate and she was appointed to the Illinois Commerce Commission by Governor Dan Walker, becoming the first woman on the commission. She was successfully reappointed to the ICC in 1978 by Gov. James R. Thompson; however, in 1983, her second term ended and due to rising utility costs, many of which she had approved on the backdrop of a national energy crisis, her reappointment was blocked by the state legislature. She resigned from the ICC and went to work for the Chicago office of the Illinois Department of Energy and Natural Resources, where she oversaw energy conservation programs.
She and her husband (then an executive for Motorola) retired to Sun City, Arizona, in 1988, but she returned to Illinois after Alfred's death in 1997. She passed away in 2002 of pancreatic cancer in the Resthaven West Nursing Home in Downers Grove. She was survived by her sons Richard, William, and Steven, and four grandchildren.
Known Bibliography
Editor
- 4Most (1941) v5#2-4, v6#1
- Blue Bolt Comics (1940) v6#5, 7-8, v7#1, 3-11
- Frisky Fables (1945) v2#4, 12
- Target Comics (1940) v7#1
Writer
- Doll Man features
- Plastic Man features
- Torchy features
Sources
- ↑ "United States Social Security Death Index," index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/JPCJ-GMK : accessed 5 April 2012), Helen Schmid (2002)