Lou & Zena Shumsky

Louis Shumsky was born into a large family on January 9, 1919, in Norma, New Jersey. His parents, Joseph and Esther Shumsky, were Russian-Jewish immigrants. At age twenty-one, Lou Shumsky was already at work as a photographer, and that's the job he did in the U.S. Army during World War II. He enlisted on November 26, 1940, more than a year before his country entered the war.

Lou Shumsky served at least part of his tour of duty in London, England, and that's where he met his future wife. Her name was Zena Feldman, and she was born in Hackney, Greater London, on January 21, 1926. Zena had an unsettled family life. Her parents, Barnet Feldman and Rebecca Karpinski, divorced in 1937. Zena attended a girls' school in London on a scholarship but had to end her studies and go to work when her father left. She first worked in a law office. Recognizing her talent, her employers offered to pay her way through law school if she would return after graduating to work for the firm. But Zena wanted to be a writer, and so she declined. Instead she went to work for Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) in London. On May 3, 1945, Zena Feldman and Louis Shumsky were married in London. The war in Europe ended just five days later.

The Shumskys returned to the United States in the late 1940s and settled in New Jersey. They had two sons together and moved to Rochester, New York, in 1954. They collaborated on two books, First Flight, illustrated by Ernest Kurt Barth and published in 1962, and Shutterbug, illustrated by Vic Donahue and published in 1963. Zena Shumsky also wrote books on her own, under her own name and two pen names, Jane Collier and Zena Collier. These include:

• The Year of the Dream (young adult fiction, 1962), illustrated by Harper Johnson
• A Tangled Web (young adult fiction, 1967)
• Seven for the People (young adult nonfiction, 1979)
• Next Time I'll Know (young adult fiction, 1981)
• A Cooler Climate (adult novel, 1990)
• Ghost Note (adult novel, 1992)

She also wrote short stories for popular magazines, including:

• "Family Affair," Canadian Home Journal (Nov. 1957)
• "The Innocents," McCall's (Aug. 1964)
• "Trial by Night," Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine (Jan. 1974)
• "Accomplices," Alaska Quarterly Review (Fall/Winter 1985)

Louis Shumsky died on May 6, 1968, in New Jersey. Zena remarried in 1970 and was also known by her second married name, Zena Hampson. She lived a writing life and was a member of writers' groups and participated in writers' events. Described as a "small, pretty woman with a soft voice and a delightful English accent,"* Zena Feldman Shumsky Hampson died on October 5, 2016, in Rochester, New York. She was ninety years old.

*From the Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, NY), September 22, 1962, page 8.

I will write a Book Jacket Bio on the illustrator of Lou and Zena Shumky's book, Ernest Kurt Barth, in the next installment of this blog.

Original text copyright 2021 Terence E. Hanley