History | Obit

Elizabeth (Gates) Lee (1913 -2002)

Long-time Cambridge resident, Elizabeth (Gates) Lee passed away Saturday, October 5, 2002 at the age of eighty-nine in Tucson, Arizona.

Elizabeth attended school in Cambridge. She and her husband, Eugene Lee, were in the same class together and had been married fifty-nine years. They lived on the shore of Lake Ripley where they ran a small resort, Hi-Lee Cottages. After surviving many Wisconsin winters, Eugene and Betty reluctantly moved to Florida. With her husband's death in 1996, Elizabeth moved to Tucson, Arizona to live with her sister, Virginia.

Elizabeth was a registered nurse. Many local people will remember her as a talented and generous artist, painting many local settings in acrylic, pastel and watercolor. Others may remember her as she played the Cambridge Country Club Golf Course, where she won many awards and tournaments.

Together, Eugene and Betty raised identical twin boys, Thomas (a librarian who lives in Upper Michigan) and Eugene, Jr., (a set designer living in Rhode Island) and have three grandsons (Graham, William, and Teddy) and two great-grand daughters (Megan and Tessa).

When that last long shadow creeps upon me

As I stand in life's sunset hour
May it come like a terrible swift wind
Out of the north or west.
I only ask as it strikes me
With its cold sure hands of steel
That through the cloud, to the
Sun's last glow, I may look --
To catch the spark divine
To light me on my way across the plain,
To mountain, to rivers end, the sea.
So that in going I may have a glance
At earth's fair beauty, as I pass on
Into eternity

-- Elizabeth (Gates) Lee (1937)

[As published in the Cambridge News, Cambridge, Wisconsin - by Graham Lee]

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