Elizabeth Helm Nitchie Explained

Elizabeth Helm Nitchie
Birth Name:Elizabeth Logan Helm
Birth Date:May 2, 1880
Birth Place:Elizabethtown, Kentucky
Death Date:February 16, 1961
Death Place:New York City
Occupation:Educator
Spouse(S):Edward Bartlett Nitchie

Elizabeth Logan Helm Nitchie (May 2, 1880 – February 16, 1961) was an American educator and expert on lip reading.

Early life and education

Elizabeth Helm was born in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, the daughter of William Logan Helm and Florence Murray Helm.[1] Her father died when she was a little girl. She was from the same extended family as John L. Helm, governor of Kentucky, and Benjamin Hardin Helm, a Confederate Army general during the American Civil War. (Her grandfather Henry Benjamin Helm was the first cousin of the governor.)[2]

Career

Nitchie worked as a stenographer as a young woman.[3] In 1917, Nitchie succeeded her late husband as principal of the New York School for the Hard of Hearing, later known as the Nitchie School of Lip-Reading,[4] in New York City.[5] [6] She frequently spoke and wrote about lip-reading in the 1920s and 1930s.[7] [8] "My own greatest handicap in teaching lip reading to the deaf is that I myself have normal hearing," she told a Brooklyn Daily Eagle interviewer in 1927. "All my teachers are either totally or partially deaf, and the general feeling is that only a deaf person can understand the attitude of the deaf and be a successful teacher."[9] She retired from running the school in 1928.

In her later career Nitchie worked in advertising at The New York Times, and ran a stenographic bureau. She taught lip-reading to children in St. Louis in 1937.

Publications

Personal life

Elizabeth Logan Helm married in 1908.[13] They had a son, Edward Jr.[14] Her husband, who was deaf, died in 1917, and she died in 1961, at the age of 80, in New York City.[15] Her grave is in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

Notes and References

  1. News: 1908-06-22 . Marriage of Nitchie / Helm . 3 . Kentucky Advocate . 2023-05-21.
  2. https://exploreuk.uky.edu/fa/findingaid/?id=xt7pnv996z22 Helm and Todd family photographs and papers
  3. News: Standish . Myles . 1937-10-17 . Specialist in the Art of Lip Reading . 81 . St. Louis Post-Dispatch . 2023-05-21 . Newspapers.com.
  4. News: 1929-04-11 . Lip School Chartered; Scholarships Are Planned in New Institution for Deaf . en-US . The New York Times . 2023-05-21 . 0362-4331.
  5. Rosenthal, Pauline T. "Elizabeth Helm Nitchie: An Appreciation to Commemorate Her Tenth Anniversary as Head of the Nitchie School" The Volta Review 29(12)(December 1927): 755.
  6. News: 1917-10-05 . Edward B. Nitchie Dies . 2 . The Brooklyn Daily Eagle . 2023-05-21 . Newspapers.com.
  7. News: 1927-10-17 . Woman Teaches the Deaf to 'Hear' with their Eyes . 6 . The Kansas City Times . 2023-05-21 . Newspapers.com.
  8. News: 1927-02-19 . Before the 'Mike' . 13 . Leader-Telegram . 2023-05-21 . Newspapers.com.
  9. News: Coster . Esther A. . 1927-11-13 . Best Speech Critics are Deaf . 96 . The Brooklyn Daily Eagle . 2023-05-21 . Newspapers.com.
  10. Coleman . Grace D. . 1923 . Review of Advanced Lessons in Lip-Reading . American Annals of the Deaf . 68 . 2 . 164 . 44462110 . 0002-726X.
  11. Book: Nitchie, Mrs Elizabeth Helm . Advanced Lessons in Lip-reading . 1923 . Frederick A. Stokes Company . en.
  12. Gebhart, Helen M. "Review of Lip-reading Principles and Practice", Oralism and Auralism 9(1&2)(1930): 55.
  13. News: 1908-06-20 . Marriage Announcements . en-US . The New York Times . 2023-05-21 . 0362-4331.
  14. Web site: Nitchie, Edward Bartlett (1876-1917) . 2023-05-21 . Jane Addams Digital Edition.
  15. News: 1961-02-18 . Mrs. Edward Nitchie . en-US . The New York Times . 2023-05-21 . 0362-4331.

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