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GROVE WRITER HELEN MUIR DIES AT 95

The Miami Herald
February 14, 2006
By GEORGIA TASKER
gtasker@MiamiHerald.com

Helen Muir, Coconut Grove writer, historian and library champion, died Monday. She was 95.

Muir, whose distinctive written and spoken voice delivered opinions and anecdotes with intellectual sharpness and aplomb, wrote Miami USA in 1953 and updated it in 1990. She wrote Biltmore: Beacon for Miami in 1989 and Frost in Florida in 1995.

"The main thing I keep thinking about is that for more than 60 years she has been recording the people, places and things in this wonderful place we call home,'' said historian Arva Parks. "I've known her since I first started in history, and she has been a cheerleader for me, cheering me up and egging me on.''

Muir had recovered from a short bout of flu and said she was ready for an egg and toast, said her son, William T. "Toby'' Muir. She got up from bed but quietly fell into the arms of her aide and died.

"At 95, when you've had a life as good as hers without pain, that's what I want,'' Toby Muir said.

Muir supported writers in whom she believed, hosted annual Friends of the Library dinners for many years, was "Irish through the last ounce,'' to use her words, and told wonderful stories.

A favorite tale involved how, following afternoon visits, she would walk revered Everglades advocate Marjory Stoneman Douglas to her house down the street, where the women would have a nip of sherry. Then Douglas would walk Muir back to her house, and they'd have a drink of sherry, then Muir would walk Douglas back and . . . .

For many years, Muir hosted an annual tea party for women writers and publishers and hired photographer Ray Fisher to document the group. The photos, pinned to a display board for each occasion, were treasured by those who attended. The Dade County pine house where she lived saw its share of famous people knock on the door, from poet Robert Frost and author Philip Wylie to Douglas, plus her many pioneering women friends of the Grove.

NEWSPAPER CAREER

She had been a writer for both The Miami Herald and The Miami News, turning out columns, reviews, stories, even working rewrite. Her grandfather had taught her to read at 4, and she was reading Shakespeare when her grammar-school books were directing her to see the brown cow. Her parents so often discussed Charles Dickens' novels that she thought the characters were cousins.

Several years ago, she began her oral history for the Society of Woman Geographers this way:

"I think I should tell you my real name. It's Helen Theresa Eucharia O'Flaherty Lennehan. My friends said I married Bill Muir to get a short byline.''

But, of course, she hadn't.

Born in Yonkers, N.Y., she went to work in 1929 at the Yonkers Herald Statesman. She was 18. After stints on New York papers, she came to Miami in 1934 to do publicity for the Roney Plaza hotel in Miami Beach.

"I had married a Hearst editor, Arthur Howland Hansl, in a church wedding on St. Patrick's Day and was out of it almost by Decoration Day,'' she said in her oral history. "It was a good idea to leave.''

She stayed in Miami for a while working at The Miami News and met "tall, handsome'' Bill Muir. "Tall and handsome'' almost always preceded her references to her attorney husband, who died at 80 in 1980.

The couple married in 1936 and had three children, Mary, Toby and Melissa. "Lissy'' was bending over to pick a flower in July 1944 when she was struck and killed by a truck. She was 4. Seven years later, Muir wrote a magazine piece about it, prompting a design change in windshields.

She came to "believe with all my heart the only two things that matter in life are love and work. I do believe that. ''

LIBRARY WORK

After Melissa's death, Muir contributed books to special shelves of the "termite-ridden'' Coconut Grove library. She was appointed to the library board and got land donated for a new library.

Soon, as head of Friends of the Library, she pushed to have a free, countywide library system established.

"I always felt libraries were like churches - sometimes more like churches than churches,'' Muir once said. "Libraries are supposed to be there, like mothers. But they cost money. People don't really understand that.''

She also started Honor With Books, "where you can put books on the library shelves and put names on them. It's a great comfort when someone dies.''

Muir was inducted into the Florida Women's Hall of Fame in 1984. That same year, she was awarded the American Library Association's prestigious Trustee Citation.

For the past few years, homebound after breaking a leg and other complications, she worked from her bedroom.

Last year, Northern Trust Bank published her autobiography, Baby Grace Sees the Cow. "Her anecdotal writing was her forte,'' said Parks.

Muir is survived by her son and his wife, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Celeste Muir, and their children Jane and Douglas; daughter Mary Burrell of New York City and her children William Lindsley of Portland, Ore., and Michael Burrell of New York City.

A service will be held at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, 1545 N. Bayshore Dr., Miami, with a reception afterward. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations to Friends of Miami-Dade Public Library or Trinity Cathedral.

(c) 2006 The Miami Herald

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