Traveler, writer, prisoner: Gwen Dew
Gwendolyn Dew, at age 24, developed a logo now seen 'round the world by anyone who orders a bouquet from an FTD florist.
Three years later, the Albion native lay flat on her back, injured as the result of a serious car accident. Already identified as a woman who "upset the conventional ways of women" (Detroit Free Press, 1922), Gwen went on to use the journalism degree she'd earned at the University of Michigan in New York-based magazines Screen Book and Movie Classic among many others.
In 1935, she made an abrupt decision to stop writing about celebrities and pursue a career in travel writing for the Detroit News, a job she got by personally lobbying managing editor Fred Gaetner, Jr. Touring first in the U.S., Gwen later focused her attention in the Far East - where she was when World War II broke out.
Gwen was in Hong Kong on Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the Japanese assault on Hong Kong began. With hundreds of other Americans, she was held in a Japanese internment camp, released after six months.
Her book, Prisoner of the Japs, and her columns in the Detroit News recounted her horrifying experiences. She also started a memoir, but too late in life.
Gwen died on June 17, 1993 - just a day before her 90th birthday - and is buried in Albion.
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