Helen Schoonover was the daughter of William Wemmer, who, with his brother Henry and Henry Deisel, created the D.W.G. cigar company, which once had plants in Lima and elsewhere in northwestern Ohio. In 1917, she married Thomas R. Schoonover, who presided over City Loan, the company he had co-founded with his father, for more than a half century and was one of Ohio’s leading philanthropists. The couple owned several houses and farms around Lima as well as a cottage at Mirror Lake near Lafayette.