Not every eighteen-year-old girl in 1903 from a town as small as Paris, Illinois would have hopped on a train headed for the big city of Chicago.  Helen Sholem Bibo (1885–1958), however, had experience traveling by rail to and from her prep school near Terre Haute, Indiana: St. Mary of the Woods (today's St. Mary of the Woods College) where she was a senior.  That trip was only about thirty-five miles from home, just across the Illinois-Indiana line, but perhaps taken alone a few times, inspiring a sense of mastery.  Then too, Helen may have been a plucky young woman.  She was a middle child, sandwiched between two older and two younger brothers who may have see-sawed between protecting and teasing her.

In Chicago I suspect Helen was met by two friends who lived there, fellow classmates at St. Mary of the Woods, Eloise E. Swayze and Hazel Browne, and that Helen was probably going to visit with the family of one of the girls over the New Year's eve holiday.  All that is known for sure is that on December 30, 1903 all three girls were at the Mr. Bluebeard matinee at the Iroquois Theater and only Helen survived.  Nothing was reported about others in Helen's theater party and there is no record of her ever speaking publicly about her experience at the fire.  Based on researching other survivors I've learned such silence is not uncommon when some in the group did not survive.  Harold Browne, thought to have been Hazel's cousin, also survived.  Did he help Helen escape?  Was the party forced to split up, two taking seats on the first floor and the other two in the first balcony?  One newspaper report said Helen was seated on the ground floor where there were fewer than a dozen victims.

Helen Bibo's maternal grandparents, Jacob Sholem (1815–1907) and Jeanette Sylvester Sholem (1829–1924), emigrated from Germany, initially settling in Terre Haute, Indiana, soon relocating a bit further west, in Paris, Illinois.  There Jacob built a fortune in dry goods.  His brother, David Sholem (1818–1854), made the trip from Germany but died soon after arrival and became the first in the Sholem family to be buried in the family plot in Highland Lawn Cemetery in Terre Haute.  The plot would eventually accommodate Jacob, Jeanette, seven other Sholems and seven Bibo's.  I don't know what all else bonded the Sholem family to Terre Haute, other than it being the location of the final resting place of its senior members, but the relevant connection to this story is that in attending St. Mary of the Woods Academy in Terre Haute Helen followed in the footsteps of her aunt Emma, Jacob and Jeanette's youngest daughter.

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