December 2, 1961

Author Thyra Samter Winslow died. Winslow wrote more than 200 stories published between 1915 and 1955 in the heyday of American popular magazines. Her early life in Fort Smith (Sebastian County) provided background for her view of small towns as prejudiced, hypocritical, suffocating places. She was a principal contributor to Smart Set, and some of her work was collected in books. In 1960, she visited Fort Smith for the last time. Later that year, she was paralyzed by a fall and remained hospitalized until her death. Her funeral was at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York—she had converted from Judaism to Catholicism during her last illness—and she is buried in the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Westchester County, New York.