This is the Memory Palace.
I'm Nate Dimaio.
It is not the life she lived afterward,
from the end of 1938 until her death in 1989 at the age of 80,
that caught the nation's attention.
Nor are those years the focus of this story.
Though the character of Helen Beebe, the woman she was during that period,
the woman she spent the rest of her life being,
is certainly in this story,
was certainly on full display during the brief time she spent in the spotlight.
And it is not the case,
as so often happens to be the case with people in history who were once briefly famous,
that the rest of her life wasn't documented.
She was, in her way,
in the sort of narrow niche in which even the most successful among us can only hope to gain prominence.
A public figure.
At least to a small section of the public.
Her obituary was in the New York Times, though it is short, and rather to her credit,
honestly,
makes no mention of the couple of weeks in the winter of 38 in which her fame briefly came.