Helen Lombard, born Helen Cassin Carusi and later known as Helen Carusi Vischer (1904–1986) was an American journalist,[1] best known for her insider's book of Washington gossip, Washington Waltz (1941).[2]
In 1951, after marrying Peter Vischer, husband and wife moved to the "Habre de Venture" historic house in Port Tobacco and raised thoroughbred horses in Charles County, Maryland.[1]
In 1927 Helen Cassin Carusi married Colonel Emanuel Eugene Lombard, a French diplomat (military attache) who died in 1946; they had a son, Charles Francis Lombard.[1][7] By 1947, she had married Washington columnist Constantine Brown,[8] but they divorced.[1] In 1951, she married Peter Vischer, a former Army colonel and State Department official (died 1967); he had a daughter from a previous marriage, Joanna Vischer Brown.[1]
Lombard was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Society of Daughters of 1812, the Charles County Children's Aid Society, and the Charles County Garden Club.[1]
In 1977, Lombard moved to the Charles County Nursing Home in La Plata, Maryland, where, known as Helen C. Vischer, she died age 81 on May 11, 1986.[1]
On March 31, 1947, conservative US Representative George Anthony Dondero called Lombard herself (by then, "Mrs. Brown") "one of the best known women in Washington, herself a scribe of wide experience, brilliant author of a book entitled Washington Waltz... [and] While They Fought."[9][10]
Lombard published two books: Washington Waltz, which recounted her life as a Washington hostess, and While They Fought, which recounted events during World War II.[1] The liberal New Yorker deemed While They Fought "rather untidy" and largely "undocumented,"[11] while the conservative Human Events found it "valuable."[12]While They Fought came out no later than March 1947, when Representative Dondero mentioned it publicly.[9]
