Helen

Helen Pierson Hai-lan Huie (許海蘭) was born on June 24, 1899 in New York City, the sixth child of Huie Kin and Louise Van Arnam. Helen was a natural athlete, competing in basketball, baseball, track and rowing while at Cornell University, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology. Helen met Paul Chi-ting Gui and the couple became engaged as students. Helen also served as the president of the YWCA and was a member of the Women’s Dramatic Club and honorary societies Raven and Serpent and Mortar Board while at Cornell.

Paul Gui (桂质廷, Gui Zhi Ting)

In 1921, Helen traveled with the Rev Harry Emerson Fosdick, a prominent liberal Baptist minister who preached modernism in Christianity, and his wife to China, where she met with her fiancé Paul Kwei. They were married on July 22, 1921 in Shanghai. An accomplished scientist and academic, Paul Gui was a Boxer Indemnity scholar and a graduate of St. John’s University, Yale University, Tsinghua College, Cornell, and Princeton. From 1922 to 1927, Paul led the Physics Department at Yale in China in Changhsa, Hunan, China. He was a Fellow in physics for the China Medical Board, a Rockefeller-endowed foundation which established the Peking Union Medical College.

From 1922 to 1941, Helen and Paul had six children. Helen was as a Professor of English and Director of Foreign Languages at Wuhan University in Hubei. Helen was happy to attend the 1979 family reunion in Silver Bay, NY. It was her first trip back to the United States in forty-three years, since 1936. In 1990, Helen was honored to receive a National Honor from the March 8 Red Banner Women’s Group in Wuhan, Hubei.

In 1995, Helen died at the age of 95 and was laid to rest in Wuhan.

Helen (fourth from left) reuniting with her siblings in Silver Bay, NY, 1979.