Class Notes

ALUMNAE IPROFILESLee Lawrence PierceClass of 1946A Doll’s View of HistoryB Y N A N C Y S H O H E T W E S T ’ 8 4“She was a rag doll with very scary eyes.I knew she had a secret, and I had to find outwhat it was.”T H I SI S S U E• Lee Lawrence PierceClass of 1946• Sharmin Eshraghi BockClass of 1980• Caroline “Carrie” HarwoodClass of 1969C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y M A G A Z I N E S P R I N G 2 0 1 0• David CavellClass of 20028When Lee Lawrence Pierce ’46 was a girl, her grandfatherreturned from Japan with a present. An inveterate tomboy, shehoped it would be something military, maybe a sword. Instead, it wasan ornately dressed doll in a glass case. The well-mannered child whohad no interest in dolls tried hard to hide her disappointment.More than seventy years later, Pierce is a collector with 180 dollsrepresenting nations all over the world, and recently completed a bookcalled More Than Meets the Eye about seven of her dolls. Each chaptertells stories of world history through a different doll’s voice.Back when her grandfather gave her the doll, Pierce put it asideand went back to playing baseball and football with her brothers. Buther indifference to dolls changed when she was thirteen. Her motherdeclared that it was time for the tomboyish ways to end and broughtPierce from their Long Island home to New York City for a weekend ofmuseums, theatre, fine dining, and shopping. At a bookstore, in an artfuldisplay about travel books, Pierce noticed a doll, the most mesmerizingshe had ever seen. “She was a rag doll with very scary eyes,” Pierce said.“I knew she had a secret, and I had to find out what it was. I loved mysteriesand Nancy Drew books, and this was a mystery I wanted to solve.”