Biography
She was born on May 9, 1873. The daughter of William Edward Kimsey and Elizabeth Dale, Lois married Marshall, 19 years her senior, on October 2, 1895.
She became involved in charitable activities in Washington and spent time working at the Diet Kitchen Welfare Center providing free meals to impoverished children. In 1917 she became acquainted with a mother of newborn twins, one of whom was chronically ill. The child's parents were unable to get adequate treatment for their son's condition. Lois Marshall formed a close bond with the baby, who was named Clarence Ignatius Morrison, and offered to take him and help him find treatment. The Marshalls had been unable to have children but they never officially adopted Morrison because they believed that to go through the procedure while his parents were still alive would appear unusual to the public. They instead made a special arrangement with his parents. Morrison lived with the Marshalls for the rest of his life. In correspondence they referred to him as Morrison Marshall, but in person they called him Izzy. Lois took him to see many doctors and spent all her available time trying to nurse him back to health but his condition worsened and he died in February 1920, just before his fourth birthday.
After her husband died in 1925, she moved to Arizona and lived on her husband's pension and the sales of his memoirs. She died on January 6, 1958.
Read more about this topic: Lois Irene Marshall
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“The death of Irving, which at any other time would have attracted universal attention, having occurred while these things were transpiring, went almost unobserved. I shall have to read of it in the biography of authors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“As we approached the log house,... the projecting ends of the logs lapping over each other irregularly several feet at the corners gave it a very rich and picturesque look, far removed from the meanness of weather-boards. It was a very spacious, low building, about eighty feet long, with many large apartments ... a style of architecture not described by Vitruvius, I suspect, though possibly hinted at in the biography of Orpheus.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)