Leone Guthrie Reeder

December 30, 2010

Leone Guthrie Reeder

Leone Reeder | Visit Guest Book Reeder Leone Guthrie Reeder died on the 28th of December 2010 in Houston, Texas, where she had been undergoing cancer treatment and hospice care for several months. Best known for her leadership as Co-Chair of the National Fund for the United States Botanic Garden, Mrs. Reeder worked tirelessly to make the National Garden on the grounds of the United States Capitol a reality. She contributed her talent to many causes at the local, state and national level. Having spent her adult life in Shreveport, Louisiana, Houston, Texas, and Washington, D.C., her countless contributions to those communities emanated from the ease with which she met and made friends and her generous willingness to share her time, talent and ideas. As a result, she made an enduring positive impact wherever she lived. Mrs. Reeder and her family lived in Shreveport for 25 years where among her many activities she was the founding Chairman of the Red River Revel, the largest outdoor arts festival in North Louisiana. A color psychology expert, she designed pediatric hospital wings at the leading children's hospitals across the country as well as educational facilities at numerous churches through her company, Medicon, Inc. A member of both the River Oaks Garden Club (Houston) and the Garden Club of Chevy Chase (Maryland), she recently returned to Shreveport to assist in establishing a Shreveport chapter of the Garden Club of America. During the six years she and her husband lived in Houston after leaving Shreveport, she served on the board of the St. Joseph Hospital Foundation and the Houston Child Guidance Center, now Depelchin Children's Center. She was an early member of the Board of Directors of the Hospice at the Texas Medical Center, now Houston Hospice, and a steadfast champion of hospice care ever since. Prior to her recent move back to Houston, Mrs. Reeder and her husband resided in the Washington, D.C. area for nearly 20 years. In addition to her leadership in building the National Garden, she served on the Board of Directors of Jubilee JumpStart where she designed an innovative center for day care and early childhood education for children ages 0-3 from low income families in the Adams Morgan District of Washington. Each year Leone organized highly anticipated and enjoyable trips with a number of her friends to Mexico under the guise of going to a spa. She had an unquenchable thirst for learning and loved the Chautauqua Institution where for many years she enjoyed the summer programs with her grandchildren. Her loving disposition and valiant efforts to converse in French endeared her to the people of the village of Chateauneuf de Gadagne, France where she and her family vacationed each spring. Leone often shared traveling adventures with a group of friends she named "The Motormouths." In Washington, she was loved by Democrats and Republicans alike. Her skill as a natural networker made her well-suited for her life as the wife of a D.C. lawyer/lobbyist. With boundless enthusiasm, a beautiful smile, and a contagious sense of humor, she was a brilliant bridge player, loved to dance and tell stories, was an accomplished watercolorist, and was blessed with a superior mind and insatiable curiosity. Supportive of her husband, Jim, in all he did, Leone was a wonderful partner, a gracious and beautiful hostess, a soft shoulder, a sympathetic ear, a perfect audience, a willing straightman, always comfortable basking in the glow, and totally in love, all while maintaining her own individuality. To her children, Ginger, Jimmy, and Elizabeth, she was the wise and proud mother who loved them equally, with always enough time, energy, advice, innovative solutions and food to nourish, nurture and sustain each of them in the unique way that each of them needed her. Leone Guthrie Reeder was born in Houston, Texas on the 13th of July 1938, to Frank Colby and Helen Drake Guthrie. She attended St. Anne Catholic School, The Kinkaid School, and Lamar High School. She attended Mount Holyoke College and was very recently awarded the Class of 1960's Model of Grace Award in recognition of the uncommon grace with which she lived her life. She also attended Southern Methodist University where she was a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma. She served as Chairman of the Kappa Kappa Gamma Alumnae Association in Shreveport. She was an ever loyal Kiowa at Camp Mystic in Hunt, Texas. A lifelong and devout Catholic, she was christened, baptized and married at St. Anne Catholic Church in Houston. Above all else, Leone Reeder, known to her grandchildren as Lele, was absolutely devoted to her husband of 52 years, Jim, her children, Ginger Reeder, James A. Reeder, Jr., and Elizabeth Neubauer, her sons-in-law, Eric Nevil and Rick Neubauer, and her grandchildren, Grace Vroom, James Vroom, Grace Nevil, and Jack Nevil, all of whom survive her. She is also survived by her brothers and sisters, whom she loved dearly: Connie Guthrie Hogland, Theo W. Pinson, Hallie Pinson, Susan Pinson Belding, Harry C. Pinson, Elizabeth Pinson and Kathy Pinson Davison. Friends are cordially invited to a visitation with the family from five o'clock this afternoon until half-past seven o'clock this evening, Thursday, the 30th of December, in the Parlor of Geo. H. Lewis & Sons, 1010 Bering Drive in Houston. A funeral mass is to be offered at ten o'clock in the morning on Friday, the 31st of December, at St. Anne Catholic Church, 2140 Westheimer Road in Houston, where the Rev. Thomas B. Mailloux, C.S.B. is to serve as the lead celebrant. Immediately following the mass, all are invited to greet the family during a reception to be held on the first floor of Inwood Manor, 3711 San Felipe Road in Houston. In Louisiana, the family will receive friends from four o'clock in the afternoon until six o'clock in the evening on Sunday, the 2nd of January, at Rose-Neath Funeral Home, 1815 Marshall Street in Shreveport. The following day, the family will gather for a private interment and Rite of Committal at Forest Park Cemetery of Shreveport. In Washington, D.C., a memorial service, celebrating Mrs. Reeder's life, is to be conducted at a later date and details are to be announced when the service is scheduled. In lieu of customary remembrances, the family suggests memorial contributions be directed to Houston Hospice, 1905 Holcombe Blvd., Houston, TX, 77030.

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