Cheryl Ann Lee, age 68 of Mankato, died on Monday, November 17, 2014. A Memorial Service will be at 11:00 a.m., Tuesday, November, 25, 2014 at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Mankato, 937 Charles Ave. A visitation will be from 10:00 a.m. until the start of the service on Tuesday, November 25 at the church. Cheryl was born on January 15, 1946 in Webster City, Iowa to Guy Thomas and Bettie Mae (McCollough) Lee. They moved to a farm in Minnesota, and then to Austin, MN where Cheryl attended school and graduated from high school. Her activities included: French Club, Science Club, Choir, scholarships from the American Heart Association and Mayo Clinic, where she studied for a summer. She earned a Bachelor of Arts from Carleton College in Northfield, majoring in sociology. She then moved to Denver, and later to South California to experience different climates and there became involved in progressive politics (McCarthy for President). She eventually moved back to Minnesota to help her family manage a mobile home park and continued her studies at the university where she studied race relations. Cheryl was extremely active in many groups and committees including; working to resettle Cambodian families, joined peace delegations to former Soviet Union, later to North Ireland, later yet to Nicaragua, where she also helped build a school, local peace groups; Citizens for Nonnuclear World and Just Peace and related Central America Concerns and Nuclear Breeze, was a long time (15 years) board chair for Committee Against Domestic Abuse, trained as a prison/community facilitator for Alternatives to Violence Project, member of both the UU and Quaker Service Committees, working with disenfranchised groups, past local leader of Church Women United and United Christian Ministry at MSU, president of UU Church Council, and former chair of local Green Party. The highlight of her life was adopting her daughter, Margaret Mae “Yanni” Lee from China. Cheryl’s interests included: learning Chinese phrases and calligraphy with Yanni, playing musical instruments, crocheting, weaving with Yanni, flowers and gardening, reading, and staying politically involved. She also spent 11 years as an advisor for YMCA “Youth in Government” program, where Yanni was a “YIG in training” and spent 3 years coordinating the Art Masterpiece Program for students at Yanni’s elementary school.
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Cheryl Lee single-handedly kept me from flunking Chem-Physics course in our freshman year with calculus. I would spend 5 hours on a problem and then take it to her, asking not for the solution but to tell me where I had gone wrong. She understood the mathematical concepts which I did not. It wasn’t just that I ended up with a slightly better grade (out of rote memory of formulas) than she. I admired Cheryl’s social action passion for justice both at Carleton and afterwards. Her pride and joy was her adopted Chinese daughter, Yanni. We kept in touch until near her death by cancer. She was a good person, my freshman year roommate.
Priscilla Cogan ’68
Comments
Cheryl Lee single-handedly kept me from flunking Chem-Physics course in our freshman year with calculus. I would spend 5 hours on a problem and then take it to her, asking not for the solution but to tell me where I had gone wrong. She understood the mathematical concepts which I did not. It wasn't just that I ended up with a slightly better grade (out of rote memory of formulas) than she. I admired Cheryl's social action passion for justice both at Carleton and afterwards. Her pride and joy was her adopted Chinese daughter, Yanni. We kept in touch until near her death by cancer. She was a good person, my freshman year roommate.