Los Angeles County
Biographies
LUCILLE
KOCH DE VRIES
Lucille
Koch de Vries is president and manager of L. de Vries Company, which produces
ACNE-MINS tablets, a pharmaceutical taken internally for the relief of
acne. As “necessity is the mother of
invention,” the formula for ACNE-MINS is the result of desperation at not being
able to find help for the disorders which her daughter suffered from hormone
imbalance during her adolescence. By
intensive reading of new research findings in endocrinology and metabolism for
many years, certain simple and harmless food supplements were found to be
effective against these disorders and surprisingly, at the same time cleared
the acne, which was then realized to be of the same etiology. After preliminary testing with a group of some
twenty young people proved the value of these elements in controlling acne, it
was put on the market in 1958. It is
distributed by the large wholesale drug companies and is available at all
drugstores in southern California. A
double blind research study just completed by the CalScience
Laboratory in Pasadena, which confirmed previous results, makes ACNE-MINS now a
clinically proven product.
In
addition to the ACNE-MINS business Lucille de Vries maintains an office at 1043
South Garfield, Alhambra, for diet consultation, to which physicians of the
area send patients for diet instruction in diabetes, obesity, and similar
problems; lately, because of the ACNE-MINS, she sees mostly teenagers and hopes
to establish a clinic devoted to their needs.
She is particularly interested in nutrition as it affects nervous and
mental disorders, and the prevention of retardation. Occasionally she gives talks on nutrition to
women’s clubs and other interested groups.
Lucille
Koch de Vries was born on July 10, 1902, near Helper, Kansas, in a gabled and
gingerbread frame house, typical of that period, which was built by the
Studebaker (Auto) Company as a residence for the Studebaker family and their
guests while they were in the Kansas land business. In 1900 her grandfather had been one of a
trainload of persons from Illinois invited by the Studebaker Land Company to
take an excursion to the new country; he bought the Studebaker home and the six
hundred forty acres of prairie that went with it, and moved out there within
the year so that a son who had just completed high school could attend the
University of Kansas. Lucille’s parents,
Louis H. and Celia (Koch) de Vries, just married, lived there with her
grandparents until she was two years old, when her father established a home
and a hardware and implement business in the little town of Helper. She recalls that they always had company as
some of the farmers came such long distances to buy implements that they had to
stay overnight. Because of her father’s
ill health, the family moved to a farm in Missouri when she was ten, and from
there to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas in 1927.
All
of her grandparents came from Germany, settling in and around Peoria and Pekin, Illinois, where her parents were born. One sister, Marguerite Tandowsky,
lives in West Los Angeles, traveling all over the state to raise funds for the
Children’s Home Society Adoption Service.
The de Vries family were French Huguenots
fleeing from religious persecution in France to Holland about 1700 and moving
later to Ostfrieseland, Germany.
Receiving
her elementary education in Helper, Kansas, and her high school education in
Fort Scott, Kansas, she then attended Missouri University, and took her last
year at the University of California at Berkeley, completing the
requirements for her Bachelor of Arts degree in the chemistry of foods and
nutrition in 1925. While at the
Universities she made the honorary scholastic societies of Retort (chemistry)
and Omicron Nu (nutrition). Miss de
Vries served her dietary internship at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri,
and in 1926 became the dietitian for Saunders Memorial Hospital in Florence,
South Carolina, during which time she qualified for, and became a member of the
American Dietetic Association. As the
State of Texas was advertising for a dietician and her family had just moved to
Edinburg, Texas, she went to Austin and became the first dietician for the
state, making menu programs and organizing the dietary departments in the
various state hospitals.
Coming
to California in 1930, she was consulting dietician at the Harriman Jones
Clinic in Long Beach until the earthquake of 1933, after which she became a
social service worker for the County of Los Angeles, carrying a caseload of
persons with diabetes, tuberculosis, and the like, and in the Department of
Child Welfare placed children and investigated foster homes for licensing. When S.E.R.A. was organized she became an
“intake investigator” determining the need of persons applying for aid. After spending 1940-1942 as a dietician at
Hoff General Army Hospital in Santa Barbara, she took a position as dietician
at the Garfield Hospital in Monterey Park, remaining there until November of
1960. In 1957 concurrently with her work
at the Garfield Hospital she opened her own office as a diet therapist.
A
member of the American Nutrition Society, Lucille de Vries is also a member of
the Alhambra Chamber of Commerce, serving on its City Beautiful Committee. She belongs to the Women’s Civic League of
Pasadena, the American Association of University Women, San Gabriel Valley
Chapter, the Sierra Club, and the Alumni Associations of the University of
California at Berkeley and the University of Missouri.
Lucille
de Vries finds relaxation from her absorbing work in gardening. Her daughter, Georgia Williams, now a student
at Pasadena City College, lives with her in Alhambra.
Transcribed
by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Historical Volume &
Reference Works Including Alhambra, Monterey Park, Rosemead, San Gabriel &
Temple City, by Robert P. Studer, Pages 390-392,
Historical Publ., Los Angeles, California.
1962.
© 2012 V.
Gerald Iaquinta.
GOLDEN NUGGET'S LOS ANGELES
BIOGRAPHIES