Blanche Oelrichs

Blanche Marie Louise Oelrichs (October 1, 1890 – November 5, 1950) was an American poet, playwright and theatre actress known by the pseudonym "Michael Strange".

Life and career

Born in New York, New York, Blanche Oelrichs spent summers in Newport, Rhode Island amidst the Astors, the Vanderbilts and numerous other wealthy elites of American society and the Gilded Age. Her parents were Charles May Oelrichs and Blanche de Loosey (whose sister was Emilie de Loosey, later Mrs. Theodore A. Havemeyer). Her sister Natalie, always known as Lily, became Mrs. Peter Martin of San Francisco, and after Peter Martin's premature death, later married Heinrich Borwin, Duke of Mecklenburg, but they later divorced.

On January 26, 1910, Blanche Oelrichs married Leonard Moorhead Thomas, the son of a prominent Philadelphia banker, with whom she had two children, Leonard Jr. (1911–68) and Robin May Thomas (1915–44). A Yale University graduate, her husband had worked in the diplomatic service in Rome and Madrid and served with the United States Army in Europe during World War I, earning the Croix de Guerre from the government of France. Blanche Oelrichs involved herself as an activist for women's suffrage; but her love for literature and poetry, especially the works of Walt Whitman, saw her begin writing verse of her own. Using the pen name Michael Strange, she had her first collection of poems published in 1916.