Sheila Camedon Tryk

Sheila Cameron Tryk, a retired newspaper, magazine and book writer and editor, died in Santa Fe on Friday January 17 at the age of 95.

Born in New York City on January 11, 1925 to Alexander and Flora (Menzies) Cameron, Sheila MacNiven Cameron was raised in Dobbs Ferry, New York and Newport, Rhode Island.  She graduated from the prestigious Hunter College High School, and later from Hunter College of the City University of New York.

During those wartime years, she volunteered as an air raid warden in her Manhattan neighborhood and as a breakfast server at her church’s weekend servicemen’s dormitory. To earn money, she became a dog-walker.  Fortunately, college fees in those days were minimal, and many of her classmates were immigrants, children of immigrants, or refugees from Nazi Germany as well as America’s segregated South. Thousands of these students went on to become teachers, lawyers, judges, doctors, writers, actresses and a Supreme Court Justice.

While she was still in college, Sheila met a young soldier from Los Angeles, Donald Eugene Tryk.  When he headed overseas to Okinawa, they kept in touch. He was fortunate enough to return unscathed and journeyed  east to  visit Sheila.  A  month after her graduation, they were married and headed west on the Super Chief. She always claimed this was the only civilized way to travel.

A stopover in Albuquerque and chats with Pueblo and Navajo people beside the Alvarado Hotel introduced her to  unfamiliar and fascinating cultures, and she hoped to return some day when they had more money than Donald’s GI Bill stipend of $90 a month.

In Los Angeles, Sheila went to work doing motion picture research at Eagle-Lion Studios while Donald returned to college and graduated from the California Institute of Technology.  When Donald received a job offer from the lab in Los Alamos, there was no question about where they should go. New Mexico, of course.

Donald was bothered by working on nuclear weapons, so they moved on – but remained enchanted with New Mexico. Over the years, Donald worked on projects as diverse as solid rockets to carry payloads to the moon and air pollution control systems to clean the air of smog.  They lived in a variety of places, ranging from Rhode Island to Australia, and including long years in Santa Fe and Albuquerque. 

Sheila worked as a feature writer for the Palm Beach Post, where she found herself the first woman in the city room. Later, she was a feature writer on the Albuquerque Tribune.  She served as a writer for the Tourist Division and then as editor of New Mexico Magazine. She then became a section editor of New Idea, a national weekly women’s magazine in Australia, with a paid circulation of a million a week. From there, she became editor-in-chief  of Your Garden, a national gardening magazine in Australia.

Sheila was the author and editor of a number of books on cooking, fashion, puzzles, travel, crafts and culture.  She was an ordained deacon and elder in the Presbyterian Church and had an avid interest in history, language  and genealogy.

She loved music of all kinds, from full symphonic orchestras to bagpipe bands and country music groups.  As a teenager, she had considered becoming an artist and was encouraged by Georgia O’Keeffe, but had switched to writing in her impoverished school years “because a pencil and paper are cheaper than painting materials.”

She maintained lifelong interests in architecture, anthropology, family histories,  photography and friends all her life.

Sheila  was predeceased by the love of her life, her husband Donald, her  beloved daughter, Christina Maureen Connell, and her brother, Dr. Alexander M. Cameron.  She leaves her son, Dr. Donald Alexander Tryk, a professor of electrochemistry in Kofu , Japan, and her son Lorn Cameron Tryk, a Santa Fe architect, and his wife, Dotti.  She also leaves two granddaughters, Allison Tryk and husband Bob Garrow, and Marslaidh Ryan and husband Hunter, all in  California, as well as two grandsons, Stephen Connell in Perth, Australia and Ashley Connell and wife Shandi in Tennessee. She also leaves two nieces and a nephew, as well as numerous great-grandchildren, and many loved relatives, including: Julia Tryk, Dennis and Julie Connell, Cameron Sommerville, Candace Stebbins, Robert and Helen Menzies, and others.

A memorial service will be held at Westminster Presbyterian Church, 841 W. Manhattan Ave. On Saturday Jan. 25th at 11:00 AM.

Burial will be at Santa Fe National Cemetery.