Nancy Melville Lessner
In a gentle way, you can shake the world.
Mahatma Gandhi
It is with great sadness that we share that Nancy Melville Lessner passed away peacefully at the age of 95 with many family members visiting and calling in her final days. Nancy had an amazing life and in her quiet, understated but effective way she made a significant difference in the world.
Nancy was born in Chicago in 1926 to her mother, mystery writer, Georgiana Craig Rice and her father, newspaper reporter, Arthur John Follows. She was raised in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin by her great aunt and uncle, Nan and Elton Rice. In her teen years, she moved to California to be with her mother, where she met her first husband, Joe Atwill. Together they had nine children.
In the 1950’s, the family lived in Japan for four years where Nancy studied Japanese language and fine arts. After her divorce from Joe, Nancy earned a Bachelor’s degree in psychology from UCLA and a master’s degree in Marriage and Family Counseling from Loyola Marymount. She met and married her second husband, Murray Lessner, while practicing as a therapist in Los Angeles. Together they moved to Hawaii, where Nancy began an adjunct career as a real estate agent. After several years in Hawaii, they moved to Montecito, California where they lived until Murray’s passing.
Nancy met the love of her life, Paul F. Glenn, when a copy of the Wall Street Journal was delivered to Nancy’s School House Road home. Paul Glenn lived at the same street number on East Valley Road. As this continued to happen Nancy finally hand-delivered the papers to Paul’s residence. By the end of that first conversation Paul had asked her out on a date. Thus began over thirty-five years of adventures together.
Paul and Nancy were inseparable until Paul passed away in 2020. Initially, they lived half of the year together in Arizona and half the year in California, eventually settling full-time in their family home on Lilac Drive in Montecito. They spent many hours working, planning and enjoying the extensive gardens, thereby establishing one of the premier cycad collections in the region. The Lilac house and gardens were the center of family gatherings, weddings, holidays and time spent enjoying the children and grandchildren. The family remembers Paul and Nancy’s love for each other. Many an afternoon Nancy and Paul could be seen waltzing together in the kitchen, or walking the property grounds and the neighborhood. Their Lilac Drive home was a beautiful venue for the numerous fundraisers and events they hosted for the local non-profit organizations Nancy was involved in. During their years together, until his death, Nancy fully supported Paul’s work on his foundation, the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research, which included traveling with Paul to visit institutions where his foundation funded research at USC, Stanford, Princeton, Harvard, the Mayo Clinic and others, and hosting visiting scientists and researchers at their Montecito home.
Nancy had a tremendous impact on the local community and the larger world through her work on the boards of Girls Inc. of Santa Barbara, Planned Parenthood of Santa Barbara and Direct Relief. CNBC recently chose Direct Relief as number one among “the top ten charities changing the world”. During her tenure, both serving on the board and as the board president at Direct Relief, Nancy was instrumental in ensuring the organization’s success as it became a world renown non-profit. Her work included assisting in the purchase of the warehouse property in Goleta and the hiring of current president and CEO, Thomas Tighe.
Nancy is survived by all nine of her children; Anne Moore, Joe Atwill, Christine Atwill, Tom Atwill, Frank Atwill, Teresa Atwill, Allison Craig Atwill, Anastasia Atwill, Constance Atwill, her grandchildren; Ezra Atwill, Michael Atwill, Beth Moore Reye, Katherine Atwill, Allison Atwill, Isabel Lane, and Kelly Chadwick, her great grandchildren; Colin, Brigit, and Annamarie Reye and predeceased by grandson, Zachariah Reye.
We want to thank the staff at Casa Dorinda medical center and Nancy’s private caregiver, Franny V., for their dedicated, generous and loving care during the last years of her life. We are encouraging people to donate to Direct Relief in her memory. Nancy would appreciate that final gesture as a way of continuing, in a gentle way, to shake the world.