Class Notes

Faith GudeLee Lawrence Pierce ’46On a subsequent visit to the bookstore, Pierce asked to buy thedoll, and the bookstore owner gave it to her. Pierce would come to findout that her instincts were right, though it took several years as an adultto piece together the story. She learned the doll had belonged to afamous World War II spy, who used her extensive doll collection to getinformation for the Japanese from other doll collectors about the ships,planes, and submarines their husbands were on.Not long after getting that doll, Pierce went off to ConcordAcademy for two happy years, then traveled to Mexico the summer afterher junior year. The country transfixed her, and she decided to takecourses at the University of Mexico without finishing at CA. When shereturned to the States, she moved to New York City, where she finishedhigh school, followed by a secretarial course.The fluency in Spanish she’d developed in Mexico turned out tobe valuable to her career. In 1951, she took a job with the State Departmentand spent the next several years living in countries throughoutSouth America and Europe. “I was always curious about what was goingon in the rest of the world,” she said. “I wanted to learn about cultures,music, languages. So I worked and studied in various countries. I like tosay I earned a PhD in life.” In her thirties, she married, moved toCambridge, and raised two young sons alone after the premature deathof her husband.As she traveled, she collected dolls and explored their historicalstories. She gave presentations on the dolls at schools, libraries, museums,and festivals. A lifelong writer who had published poems andplays throughout her adulthood, she finally decided to commit the dolls’stories to paper just a few years ago. She is self-publishing the first sevenstories through AuthorHouse later this year.That leaves more than 170 dolls whose stories still need to bewritten, but right now Pierce’s attention has turned to another project.From a great-aunt, she inherited the letters of a Russian noblewomanfrom St. Petersburg who married one of Pierce’s Pennsylvania ancestors.The great-aunt told her the letters contain a mystery and a love story,and Pierce is busy piecing that story together.So at the age of eighty-three, with her 180 dolls surrounding her,Pierce’s eyes are turned to Russian history. The doll stories, like the dolls,will wait on a shelf while she unravels her next mystery.9C O N C O R D A C A D E M Y. O R G S P R I N G 2 0 1 0