Louise Shallit, journalist, author, and long-time resident of Wynnewood, PA, died Wednesday September 2 2009 in Newtown Square, PA. She was 90.
Born Louise Lee Outlaw, she wrote under her maiden name and several different pseudonyms, including Lee Canaday and Juliet Ashby.
Louise Shallit was born in New York City on June 26, 1919, the daughter of newspaperman Claude Raymond Outlaw and Margaret Rose Marshall. She moved to Orlando, Florida in 1925 and often recalled the wonder of having orange trees in her backyard. Later, she moved back to New York, where she attended Brooklyn's Bay Ridge High School, an all-girls school, and was encouraged by her English teacher, Tony Serota, to pursue a career in writing.
Louise became the first woman reporter for the Florence (S.C.) Evening Star and sold her first story to the New York Daily News at age 19. Later, she moved to Philadelphia, where she became a reporter for the Philadelphia Record (now defunct). At the Record she met a copy boy who later became her husband.
Louise wrote short stories for many magazines, including Story, Collier's, Detective Tales, Cosmopolitan, Fantastic, Redbook, Good Housekeeping, and Reader's Digest. In the 1960's, she also wrote many feature stories for the Philadelphia Bulletin's Sunday Magazine, including an interview with Jackie Gleason.
During World War II she served in the Women's Army Corps. She married Joseph Shallit, a journalist and author, on April 11, 1944. He predeceased her in 1995.
In the 1980's, Louise wrote romance novels, including Dream of Passion (Silhouette #279), One Man Forever (Silhouette #162), Midnight Lover (Silhouette #258), and Victim of Love (Candlelight #254). Her books were translated into French, German, Italian, and Japanese. She also wrote a history of the Mutual Beneficial Association of Penn Central Employees.
In 1960 she moved to a house on Greythorne Road in Wynnewood, PA, where she raised her two sons. She moved to White Horse Village, a life-care community in Newtown Square, PA, in 1995. In her later years she was afflicted with macular degeneration, which prevented her from reading and writing and which caused her great sadness.
She is survived by two sons: Jonathan, a music professor at SUNY Oswego; Jeffrey, a computer science professor at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario; and four grandchildren. Donations in her memory can be made to the American Cancer Society and the American Macular Degeneration Foundation.