Lee Ann Strain

Lee Ann Strain, age 90, of Palo Alto, CA passed away due to complications of chronic heart failure and vascular dementia on Wednesday, June 5, 2024 in Palo Alto, CA. Lee was born in Frankfort, IN on June 5, 1933 to Bernard and Mildred O'Laughlin who preceded her in death. In 1957 she married Charles Russell Strain at the Episcopal Cathedral in Minneapolis, MN. They were divorced in 1976 and he passed on
November 11, 1988 at home with her care.
She is survived by all of her children: Susan Strain, John Strain, Sarah Lang (and her son, Charles), Leslie Dudley and her children (Tessara and Sean), Hilary Strain, Linnet Strain, and Carter Strain. She is also survived by her sister in law, Shirley Ann O'Laughlin, and their many children and grandchildren.
She grew up in the dunes close to Lake Michigan, and spent many days exploring the woods there with her brother and their neighbors' children. She attended schools in Gary, Indiana, where she was also part of an Air Scout group she helped found during the Second World War: getting many rides in Piper Cubs at the airport. During high school she also enjoyed playing music (violin and piano), drama club, and being valedictorian of her high school.
After studying at several universities in the midwest, and trying several different majors (chiefly chemistry and philosophy), Lee taught at Lake Elmo in Minnesota for a year; during the Minnesota winter she taught her first grade students the Virginia Reel and brought them many books from the Minneapolis library.
After marrying, she quickly began her family, then, after having two babies, graduated from Stanford in 1960 with a BA in Psychology (particularly child development and cognition).
In the 1960s she combined raising a family with graduate coursework in psychology and pre-medical courses, and teaching at Peninsula School (preschool through middle school) into the mid-1970s. While working at Peninsula she developed both a math lab and many teaching methods for the other teachers and parents to help everyone enjoy teaching and learning math. A number of her students went on to work in STEM fields.
In the mid-seventies she added working nights as a nurse's aide to everything else she was doing, and so began a long career in nursing that overlapped with her divorce in 1976 and her completion of most of a masters degree at San Jose State around the same time. She successfully talked her way into medical school, but was unable to move to South Dakota at that time, so continued to work in nursing
through the 1980s-- including challenging the licensed vocational nurse exam and passing it.
She moved to Oregon for a couple of years to attend school and ended up taking care of Charles Strain when he became ill, then returned to California in 1990 to work as an LVN and begin work on a series of exams to become a registered nurse through the Regents College of New York. She passed all the exams and the CA state boards by the mid-nineties and began working as an RN at Kaiser Redwood City in the
mother/baby unit. Kaiser trained her as a neonatal intensive care nurse and she began also working at Good Samaritan Hospital in the neonatal intensive care unit as an LVN while she finished up her RN.
Working two jobs was difficult and led to her getting a triple bypass at 69, after which she retired from Kaiser and continued working at Good Sam for another six years as a NICU RN. She loved working in the NICU, and particularly enjoyed helping parents connect better with their babies (including how to feed them). She helped them learn how to pay attention to their babies and support their cognitive and
emotional development. This was always a core passion for her in all her work and family activities.
She retired at 75 from Good Samaritan and began a fulfilling period of reading and taking math courses. She continued to enjoy reading, studying languages, and sewing into the last few years of her life. Doing this became more difficult with her health issues during the Covid pandemic, but between hospitalizations and trips to rehabs she continued to study and enjoy her trips to the Mountain View library-where they started having a puzzle table at her suggestion, and she had many happy hours there working alone or with others.
Cheerful, friendly and sociable, she made friends wherever she went and shared both her wisdom and love of life with whoever crossed her path. She had a generous heart and was a good listener. She is much missed.
The family can be contacted through email at hblueviola@yahoo.com. If there is interest, we may do a Celebration of Her Life at the Mountain View library. Please let us know if you would be interested, or would like to share any memories with her family.