University of Massachusetts Amherst - Index Yearbook (Amherst, MA)

Page 21 text:

A( 1UJLTY

Page 23 text:

Helena fjeresia oegs;mann LAST summer, while students and faculty of the Massachusetts Agricultural College were on their vacations, far from each other and the associations of the College, the news of the passing of Miss Helena Goessmann united all hearts in their common loss of a valued friend and ardent co-worker. The student-body, in her going, had lost an inspirational teacher and friend; the faculty, a strong, efficient helper. For many weeks we had known of Miss Goessmann ' s struggle and her won- derful courage in the face of continuing ill-health. Her marvelous fortitude in facing the probability of spending years in total blindness, inspired everyone who knew her. During her temporary absence from the college, she had made so much progress in regaining her health that we were all looking forward to having her among us again, at the beginning of the college year. Miss Goessmann has been intimately associated with the college most of her life. Her father was a distinguished and valued member of the first faculty when the doors of the college opened, and served in that capacity for more than thirty years. Miss Goessman graduated from the Amherst High School, and from Sacred Heart College at Providence, Rhode Island, and later she received the degree of Master of Philosophy from Ohio State University, supplementing this training with extensive study and travel in Germany, England and France. Miss Goessmann was devoted to her chosen field of English literature. Her own rare spirit found its natural home in the works of the great minds who wrote for the ages. She knew well that literature could be taught so that it is the most powerful thing in life to help stimulate young men and women to finer thought and better living. Many of her pupils look back upon the hours in her classes with the knowledge that it was in her class room they first learned to love the beautiful and to appreciate the great in literature, and there resolved to seek it in life. Above all else. Miss Goessman believed it was people who counted most. Consequently her life was rich in friendships from every walk of life. She loved people and had a real gift for friendship. In expressing her sense of indebtedness to Miss Goessmann, a former student has written, — She was interested in every one of her pupils and kept before them always a high vision of their own possibilities. The splendid philosophy of her life — a life spent generously and joyously in its very act — was a stimulus to new goals of achievment, of courage, of faith, of social usefulness. To have known her well was a privilege that I shall remember gratefully as long as I live. Her life will go on as she would wish it to, working forever in the widely scattered lives which touched hers, and into which she put so much of strength and inspiration and beauty. EDNA L. SKINNER 17