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BBQ Chicken Dinner Fundraiser: Saturday, April 25, 5-7:30 pm
Lee Taylor
Lee Taylor
Horticulture Professor and Gardener Extraordinare
Horticulture Professor and Gardener Extraordinare
The Lions Club was thrilled to help Lee celebrate his birthday earlier this year. A young 95 and a member since shortly after he moved to Maine in 2007, thanks to Bill Stressenger, he's an active participant in our semi-monthly member dinners and our fundraisers.
Lee was a popular and successful professor of horticulture at Michigan State University from 1960 to 1988, teaching hundreds of students in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. MSU's Department of Horticulture features his contributions throughout its publication, From Seed to Fruit, a 150-year history of the program and its impact on the community.
A 30-year member of the Air Force, primarily the Reserves, he completed his service as a colonel and commander of a Selective Service Reserve Detachment.
He and his wife, Jane, raised a son and a daughter in Michigan; his son, Tim, teaches ethnomusicology at UCLA and his daughter, Kris, performs the flute and teaches in the Portland area.
Jane Taylor, top row, and Lee Taylor, seated, at MSU in 2005.
While in Michigan and drawing on their joint love of gardening and working with students and children, Jane Taylor was the founding curator of the MSU 4-H Children's Gardens, which recently celebrated its 30th anniversary. Jane passed in 2019, and Lee remains proud of her groundbreaking work at the university. To see how important horticulture remains at MSU today (no doubt due in part to the Taylors' influence), check out the video below.
Lee's yard is filled with bluebirds; flowers, particularly snapdragons and sweet alyssum; a wood-burning sauna that he built; and vegetable gardens, which he's eager to see producing again this summer. Kris does most of the planting and planning now, but he makes sure that plenty of pole beans are available, along with summer squash, parsnips, green onions, lettuce, and a variety of herbs.
A former keeper of the club newsletter, Lee would love to see additional members of the community participate in the Lions Club, inviting them to join us at our monthly meetings and the annual Family Fun Day celebration in June. He thinks the Lions Club is perfect for newly retired community members, those whose schedules are newly freed up and are looking for ways to get involved. Lions Club members are good and reliable neighbors, he notes, whose service and friendship can be counted on, reeling off a list of Cape neighbors and their service.Â
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