Principal of Granada Hills School Dies

Mrs. Judith Wolf Lee, principal of a Granada Hills elementary school and member of a family prominent in promoting cultural relations in the Los Angeles area, died early Saturday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where she was being treated for ovarian cancer.

Mrs. Lee, who worked four years at Haskell Elementary School on Tulsa Street in Granada Hills, was 43. During the first 1 1/2 years, Lee also was principal at nearby Danube Avenue Elementary School.

Called Innovative

Colleagues praised Mrs. Lee as an innovative and enthusiastic educator who ushered Haskell Elementary through a sensitive period of racial integration and helped develop the Los Angeles Unified School District’s magnet school program. The program attracts students to schools offering specialized instruction in an effort to better integrate the school district.

“She had a very strong personal commitment toward integration,” said Barbara Jacobs, an administrator with the Office in Student Integration Options for the Los Angeles district.

‘A Great Loss’

Norman H. Rossell, the school district’s regional administrator for the northern San Fernando Valley, called Mrs. Lee’s death “a great loss, not just to the family and school district, but to the city of Los Angeles because her family plays a major role in the community.”

“They have made a tremendous contribution to our whole city, bringing people together of different ethnicities and religions,” he said.

She was the daughter of Rabbi Alfred and Miriam Wolf. He is senior rabbi emeritus at Wilshire Boulevard Temple and director of the Skirball Institute on American Values of the American Jewish Committee in Los Angeles.

One of her brothers, David Wolf, 45, is president of Pierce College in Woodland Hills. Another, Dan Wolf, 37, is press deputy to Los Angeles County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn.

Began as 4th-Grade Teacher

Mrs. Lee was a 20-year veteran of the district, having started as a fourth-grade teacher at Budlong Avenue Elementary School in South-Central Los Angeles in 1967. She also taught at Micheltorena Elementary School in Silver Lake. Meanwhile, she earned a school administrator’s degree from Pepperdine University in 1975.

Mrs. Lee’s administrative career began in 1976, when she accepted a position as an administrator for the district’s magnet schools. Before coming to the San Fernando Valley, she was vice principal at Arlington Heights Elementary School.

She had also been a teacher and administrator at the temple’s religious school and a counselor and dance instructor at Camp Hess Kramer, a Jewish summer camp in Malibu.

Married in April of this year, she is survived by Jack Lee, a police officer at Vernon Junior High School in Los Angeles.

The family has requested that donations be sent to the Wilshire Boulevard Temple camps’ fund, which includes Camp Hess Kramer.

Services will be held Tuesday at noon at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple. Private interment follows at the Home of Peace Mortuary in East Los Angeles.