Mary Helen SAMSOT

SAMSOT
Mary Helen Dohan Samsot, of Houston, died on the Tuesday, the 4th of October 2011, at 6:32 in the evening.
Born on the 15th of February 1914 to Joseph Francis Dohan and Anastasia Enneking Dohan in Cincinnati, Ohio, she moved at age five to New Orleans, Louisiana, where she lived for most of her life. She graduated from Newcomb College, and was a member of Chi Omega sorority and Newcomb editor of the Jambalaya Yearbook.
She became an instructor at Newcomb, and earned her Master's degree from Tulane University in 1938. That same year, she married Robert Desposito Samsot, attorney and later Captain, USNR, who spent two years on Pacific duty during World War II. They had two children, Kathleen Samsot Hawk and Robert Louis Samsot.
At times, she was active with the League of Women Voters and the American Association of University Women; she was elected to Kappa Delta Pi honorary education fraternity.
As a free-lance writer, she published a number of articles and short stories and in later life published a highly praised book Our Own Words (Knopf), later reprinted as The Making of the American Language (Dorset). Her second book, Mr. Roosevelt's Steamboat (Dodd Mead), a documentary narrative of the first steamboat voyage down the Mississippi, became the basis for a theme cruise on the steamboat "Delta Queen" with the author as guest lecturer.
In 1990, nine years after her husband's death, she moved to Houston to be near her daughter.
Survivors include her daughter and son-in-law, Kathleen Samsot Hawk and Malcolm David Hawk of Houston; her son and daughter-in-law, Robert Louis Samsot and Michael Newton Samsot of Fairfax, VA; grandchildren, David Charles Hawk of San Francisco; Amy Elizabeth Hawk of Houston; Eleanor Hawk Gray of Bainbridge Island, WA; Kathleen Anderson Samsot of Fairfax, VA; Robert Dohan Samsot of Arlington, VA; and six great-grandchildren.
A memorial service is to be conducted at ten o'clock in the morning on Saturday, the 5th of November, in the St. Theresa Room at St. Anne's Catholic Church, 2140 Westheimer Road in Houston, where the Rev. Tom Mailloux is to officiate. Immediately following, all are invited to greet the family during a reception.
An interment service is to be conducted at a later date at Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans, Louisiana.
In lieu of customary remembrances and for those desiring, contributions in honor of Mary Helen may be directed to Catholic Relief Services, P.O. Box 17090, Baltimore, MD, 21203-7090; or to the charity of one's choice.