Frances "Sally" McKee Schlegel

Sally (Frances) Schlegel died early Tuesday, November 9, at the Ingham County Medical Care Facility where she had resided for the last five years of her life. The family is grateful to the staff of the North unit for their extraordinary loving care of Sally. She was 92.

Sally was born Frances Mckee in Atlanta, Georgia, and grew up in Indiana where her father was professor of English at Purdue University. She graduated from Purdue’s School of Science in the class of 1939. She was also an editor at the Exponent, the Purdue student daily newspaper, reflecting her enthusiasm for both journalism and the English language that she expressed throughout her life. She continued her studies in biochemistry at the University of Colorado Medical School in Denver and then at the University of Illinois, where she pursued her doctorate in chemistry under Dr. Worth Rodebush. At Illinois Sally met Richard Schlegel, and they both were employed at the Manhattan Project’s “Metallurgy Laboratory” in Chicago during World War II. They married in 1946.

In 1949, after three years in Princeton, New Jersey, Sally and Richard returned to what they felt was familiar midwestern terrain when Richard took a position in the Physics Department at Michigan State College. Sally became an indefatigable participant in local activist communities and was tireless in her support of causes and beliefs that she judged to be reasonable and humane. She was a mainstay of the Lansing Peace Education Center, participated in Michigan State’s cooperative nursery school, organized property owners to pay for sidewalks for school children, and organized and demonstrated in favor of nuclear disarmament and civil rights.

In 1954 Sally and Richard and their two small children spent a sabbatical year in Cambridge, England. Cambridge became a touchstone in Sally’s life as she and Richard returned there repeatedly over the decades. From England she brought to her life in Michigan ideas and activities as diverse as interests in English country churches, Fabian socialism, grocery shopping by bicycle, and fish for breakfast.

Sally was preceded in death by her husband Richard, her brother Jim of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and sister Molly of West Lafayette, Indiana. She is survived by her son, Thomas of San Diego, California, and daughter, Catherine, of South Bend, Indiana. She will be remembered and deeply missed by her family and friends far and near, but in particular by her friend and aide of the last ten years, Teri DeMyers-Beadle, with whom she met the challenge of increasing dementia with her pride intact and with a fierce desire to stay connected to the world she inhabited.

In lieu of flowers Sally would request that well-wishers make a donation to the social justice organization of their choice. Arrangements for a memorial service are pending.

The family is being served by Gorsline Runciman Funeral Homes, East Lansing.