Lee Harwood
May 21, 1917-March 2, 2014
Portola Valley, California

Lee Lewis Harwood died peacefully at The Sequoias in Portola Valley with family at her side on March 2, 2014. She was 96.

Born Winifred Lee Lewis in Evanston, Illinois, on May 21, 1917, to W. Lee Lewis and Myrtilla May Cook Lewis, she was brought up in Evanston and graduated from Evanston Township High School in 1934. She followed in her father's footsteps to Stanford University, graduating as a member of the women's honorary society, Cap and Gown, in the Stanford class of 1938. She met her future husband, Wilson Franklin Harwood, at Stanford and they were wed on Dec 31, 1938, in Winnetka, Illinois; they were married for 69 years. Their pioneering spirit and Wilson's consulting career, kept them traveling internationally into their 90s. During their first 50 years together, Lee set up 25 households all over the world, including Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Iran, Peru, England, Kuwait, Egypt and both coasts of the U.S.

Lee lived by the motto, "Think Globally, Act Locally." Her paid positions were as a social worker, secretary to the Turkish Ambassador to Kuwait, and poll worker in Portola Valley. During the 1940s and 50s in Washington, D.C., she worked with the League of Women Voters to get the D.C. vote, volunteered with her daughters' Girl Scout troops and successfully lobbied for a music program in the D.C. elementary schools. Overseas, she started a band at the American School of Manila, helped establish a new orphanage in Tehran, and assisted in launching a mobile railroad car health clinic for the wives of railroad workers in Peru.

After returning to the U.S. and settling in Portola Valley, in 1965, Lee re-joined the League of Women Voters, played in the Mid-Peninsula Recorder Orchestra and reported on international subjects to her "Current Events" women's club. She served as president of the Community Committee for International Students at Stanford and "adopted" foreign students each year, many of whom remained lifelong friends. During her 26 years at The Sequoias retirement community of Portola Valley, she actively volunteered on numerous resident committees. As editor of The Sequoian newsletter in the late 1980s, she initiated the transition from typewriter to desktop publishing.

Lee is survived by her sister-in-law, Sara "Sally" Harwood de Bivort (Portola Valley, California); her three children, Margaret "Peg" Harwood Milledge (Palo Alto, California), Sara Harwood Arnold (Lexington, Massachusetts) and Lewis Harwood (Bethesda, Maryland); five grandchildren, Eric Arnold (Westwood, Massachusetts), Michelle Milledge Trostler (Carlsbad, California), Alison Arnold Baty (Concord, Massachusetts), Wilson Harwood (Boulder, Colorado) and Max Harwood (Brooklyn, New York) and their spouses/partners, as well as her six great-grandchildren.

Tags: public service