So We May All Be Heard
By Marlene Cook, historian

Helen Ekin Starrett was the second president of IWPA serving from 1893 to 1894. Records do not explain why her term was up after one year, but they do reveal that she was a very busy woman.

She was an author, editor, publisher, educator, inventor,

reporter, business woman, suffragette, Temperance member, business woman, volunteer and mentor. She was the only woman in the nation who attended both the first National Woman Suffrage Association convention in 1869 and its last in 1920.

She was founder of Kenwood School for Girls and later founder and principal for nine years of the Starrett School for Girls, both located in the Kenwood Community of Chicago. Founded in 1884, Starrett School was a large day school with accommodations for 10 resident pupils providing classes from kindergarten to college preparation.

Born Helen Martha Ekin on September 19, 1840, in Pittsburgh, Penn., to Rev. John Ekin DD and Esther Fell Lee, she was the oldest of three daughters. She married the Rev. William Starrett in February 1864 and they had three sons.

Those sons became famous in their own right as owners of the construction firm, Starrett Brothers Inc and Ekin in New York City. They were responsible for the erection of the Flatiron Building, Empire State Building, Pennsylvania Railroad Station and the Plaza, Biltmore and Commodore hotels. Prior to forming Starrett Construction, son Paul was president of the

George A. Fuller Company in Chicago where under his supervision the Bellevue Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington were erected.

In Melville E. Stone’s book, Fifty Years a Journalist, he wrote, “Helen Ekin Starrett wrote with a masculine pen and dealt brilliantly with almost every conceivable topic.”

Roseland Rosenberg, speaker at Barnard College Commencement Ceremonies in 2002 titled her address, “After College What?” after Starrett’s book of the same title.

She said, “Starrett described what she called the ‘blank nothingness’ that a young woman confronted upon receiving her bachelor’s degree. What came after college? students wondered. They had no adequate answer, Starrett lamented. Brothers might go on to law or medical school; they might go into public service or business; they might enter the ministry or academe. A woman could pursue none of these paths. She could do only the things for which a college education was not necessary – return home, teach, or marry. But these choices no longer seemed enough.”

Thanks to women like Helen Ekin Starrett, today’s woman has so many more choices. There is nothing she can’t do. Listen to her roar!

Starrett’s books are not copyrighted and can be downloaded
from the Internet.