Dr. Shelly Lescott-Leszczynski (posthumously)

Dr. Lescott-Leszczynski's concerns about ethnic conflicts and the escalation of fundamentalist extremism and hate speech led her to become a founding board member of UNR's Center for Holocaust, Genocide & Peace Studies. A member of the Polish Institute of Arts & Sciences of America, she feels that her HGPS involvement helps her to carry on the legacy of her husband's aunt, Maria Leszczynska Eckhardt, a Righteous Gentile who saved the life of a Jewish girl in Tarnopol during W.W.II.

As an Editor in the College Departments of Harcourt Brace and Harper & Row, Dr. Lescott-Leszczynski specialized in editing and rewriting textbooks and teaching materials until she and her husband left the United States to work and travel in Europe for several years.

She has published three books: High Hopes and Gold Dust West! — oral history accounts of early twentieth-century life in Nevada, which she and her husband, John, compiled as a tribute to the senior citizens of Washoe County and as their volunteer contribution for Nevada's bicentennial year; Commitment to Caring, — author David Toll's excellent pictorial history of Saint Mary's Hospital in Reno; and Man from Mono — a memoir of Mono Basin's pioneering LaBraque family as told to Lily Mathieu LaBraque by her father.

Lescott-Leszczynski operates a publishers' service bureau in Reno, and volunteers much of her spare time to Center activities and publications. A New York-bred "borscht belt" hoofer (as a child she sang Yiddish melodies and danced on golden roller skates in the Catskills), she enjoys exploring Jewish music of many eras and cultures with Temple Sinai's Music Chavurah and Choir.

"My husband's aunt, a Righteous Gentile, saved a Jewish girl in Tarnopol. That life might have been mine - and all my generations still to come... With our combined efforts, we can promote appreciation for human diversity and respect for the worth of every indiviudal."

Profession
Editor and Businesswoman

Contact
SLescott@aol.com