Publication Date: Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Lawyer/mentor Kitty Lee of Palo Alto dies
Lawyer/mentor Kitty Lee of Palo Alto dies
(February 09, 2005) by Jay Thorwaldson
Kitty (Catherine Lockridge) Lee, who went to law school after raising a family in Palo Alto and became an expert on trusts and estates tutoring and mentoring scores of young lawyers, died Saturday evening of ALS, "Lou Gehrig's Disease," after an illness of more than a year.
"I've had lawyers tell me they learned more from Kitty than from law school," a daughter, Amy Lee of Portola Valley, said.
Despite increasing incapacity in recent months, she continued practicing law and attended a Stanford University women's basketball game last Thursday -- where she was given special honors and hugs by team members after the University of Arizona game. Officials ran a special cord to her seat to operate her breathing machine, and she managed to stand up from her wheelchair and take a shot at the basket with an autographed basketball.
Her attendance was discussed at length on a local radio broadcast about the game.
While at Stanford Law School, she was the roommate of Sandra Day O'Connor, now a Supreme Court justice, for two years, and they remained lifelong friends.
Among her early challenges was working with her grandfather, Dr. Russel V.A. Lee, founder of the Palo Alto Medical Clinic, on a complex sale/donation of land to the City of Palo Alto, which became Foothill Park nearly a half century ago.
She was born in Marshall, Mo., in 1928, and was raised in a large extended family. She was valedictorian of her high school class. She received a bachelor's degree in American Government from MacMurray College for Women in Jacksonville, Ill., where she played on the college tennis team and was the lead player on a "very bad" basketball team -- her love of the two sports was lifelong and she was an avid tennis player until the late 1990s.
In 1950, she chose Stanford Law School over Harvard, Yale and others. She was an editor of the Stanford Law Review.
She met her future husband, Dr. Philip Lee, eldest son of Russel and Dorothy Lee, in 1952 at New York University Bellevue -- and an uncle took it upon himself to announce their engagement a week later without informing them. They were married after graduation and moved to Rochester where Philip was an internal-medicine fellow at Mayo Clinic. She began a part-time law practice while starting her family.
They moved to Palo Alto and added their home to the Lee family compound in the foothills. They had five children: Dorothy, Paul, Margie, Amy and Ted.
In 1963 they moved to Washington, D.C, while Philip served with Agency for International Development on maternal and child health and family planning, then with the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.
After the Johnson Administration ended, they moved back to California when Philip became chancellor of the UCSF Medical Center, and Kitty began practicing law with a partner in Palo Alto, later opening a solo practice out of her home office on Dartmouth Avenue.
She was still working on a tax-law case until a few days before her death, and her clients included four generations of family members.
Personally, she was a fan of bluegrass, Dixieland and Preservation Hall Jazz Band music -- she was friends with Preservation Hall band members. She also loved river rafting and continued rafting until last year.
She is survived by sisters Elizabeth King and Florence Lockridge and by brothers Bill and John Lockridge, and by her five children and five grandchildren.
Memorial services are being scheduled for the afternoon of Wednesday, March 2, at Stanford's Memorial Church, precise time pending.
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