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John and Doris Lee Shettel met as students at Lebanon
Valley College in Annville, PA in 1945. Their work in a scholarship
program brought them together at a nearby interdenominational chapel for
quarry workers’ families, where Doris Lee taught Sunday school and John
was student pastor. Marriage followed on Christmas Eve of 1946.
Afterwards they transferred to Hendrix College in Conway, AR, where they
received bachelor’s degrees in English Literature, plus a biology degree
for Doris Lee.
Doris Lee was born and grew up in Hagerstown, MD. Between high school
and college she worked for two years as the local newspaper’s first
female reporter and photographer. She credits this job opportunity to a
shortage of men during WW II.
As a “preacher’s kid” John moved frequently, mostly in Pennsylvania and
Maryland. He spent his early teen years in Annville, PA, where his
father taught philosophy. During the war years, while his father was
assigned as Army chaplain to German prisoners of war at Camp Robinson,
AR, John graduated from Central High School (later scene of civil rights
strife) in Little Rock.
After college, they moved to Princeton, NJ where John got his seminary
education at Princeton Theological Seminary and Doris Lee worked for the
Gallup Poll. Their sons, Bruce and Bob, were born in New Jersey. In
Princeton they lived across the street from future author John McPhee
and a few doors up the block from Albert Einstein, who could be seen at
work silhouetted by lamplight.
John was ordained in the Presbyterian Church USA in 1951 and served
forty years until his retirement in 1991. For sixteen years he was a
pastor to congregations in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.
From 1967-91 he was an educational consultant, traveling over much of
Pennsylvania doing leadership training, teacher training and youth
ministry. Their daughter Laurie was born in 1954, and a foster son
Chris, a member of John’s congregation in Wheeling, WV, became part of
the family after being orphaned.
Doris Lee had a multifaceted career. In the 1960’s she taught high
school English in public schools and at Linsly Military Academy. She
became a curriculum writer and photographer and for thirty years worked
for several church publishing houses. She had her own darkroom all those
years, and lost no time changing to a digital darkroom as soon as the
technology was available. One of her hobbies turned into a small
business when she set up beekeeping with some forty hives of honeybees.
She was one of the founders of a pioneer beekeepers association in
western Pennsylvania and was known as “the bee lady,” often responding
to calls to remove swarms of bees from homes and shrubbery.
Over the years they took many family vacation trips in the western
mountains. During those vacations, they climbed Mount Rainier, the Grand
Teton, Mount Whitney and Long’s Peak by the East Face as well as by the
well-known “keyhole” route.
Remembering all those years of vacationing in the West, when they
retired in 1991 they chose to move to Colorado’s western slope, where
two of their children and their first grandchild already lived. They now
have five grandchildren. Laurie and Bob still live in the Roaring Fork
Valley, Bruce lives in Pennsylvania, and Chris in Oregon. They joined
the 100 Club in the summer of 1992. They have hiked every summer since
and also participated in cross-country skiing and snowshoeing
activities. John has a 2000-mile pin and Doris Lee a 1000-mile pin, and
they are both working on the next thousand. Doris Lee had double knee
replacement in 2004 but can still hit the trail, albeit not as
strenuously as before.
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