Lorie Dodge Leininger

Leininger—Lorie Dodge Leininger, 89, on July 29, 2016, in Honolulu, Hawaii. Lorie was born on August 9, 1926, in Vienna, Austria, to an Austrian mother and a Hungarian father, who left the family when she was young. Sickly as a child, she almost died from pneumonia. In her large Catholic family, discipline was strict, but she was a critical thinker and not one to follow rules unquestioningly. Her family moved to Milan, Italy, when she was young, so her primary language was Italian, her German becoming limited to music, especially opera. The family immigrated to America and settled in New Jersey, where at age 11 she held Italian classes for her neighborhood friends.

Her parents taught her to appreciate art, music, and continual learning, and she studied at Cooper Union with a scholarship, University of California Berkeley, and University of Chicago. As a Catholic, she was surprised when, at age 25, she discovered that her birth certificate listed her as Jewish. At a demonstration/political rally at UC Berkeley, she met a woman from a long line of Quakers who lived convinced that the answer to all world problems is love. Lorie constructed political banners, made woodblock prints that traveled all the way to Vietnam, and once went to jail for ten days because of her work for peace.

She taught in kindergarten, elementary school, and Amherst College, joining Mt. Toby Meeting in Leverett, Mass., in 1979. When she retired from Amherst after 30 years, she joined her brother in Hawaii to escape the harsh winters and the spring and summer allergies. In 1998 she transferred her membership to Honolulu Meeting. A lover of math, history, and literature, she volunteered as a docent at Honolulu Academy of Art and flourished in the artistic world, writing a short book on the history of witches. Lorie is survived by three children; one grandson; a brother, Fred Dodge; and many nieces and nephews.