Ellen K. Lee, 87; Expert on Helena Modjeska, the Polish Actress Who Lived in O.C.

Ellen K. Lee’s fascination began with a writing assignment for her UC Irvine professor in 1965. But Lee couldn’t let go of the story of the Polish actress who founded a short-lived Utopian community in Anaheim and mastered Shakespeare on the American stage.

So Lee turned herself into a scholar on Helena Modjeska, a 19th century thespian who is revered in her home country. Later she became instrumental in establishing a foundation dedicated to the preservation of Modjeska’s home, a national historic landmark nestled in the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains in Orange County.

“Without Ellen, most of us believe there would be no foundation,” said Linda Plochocki, president of the group that began in 1990. “She was a consummate researcher who continued working with the foundation up until the day before she died.”

Lee, who also wrote a well-regarded book on the history of Newport Bay, died of cancer Jan. 25 at her home in Laguna Beach, said John K. Lee, one of her four sons. She was 87.

She was one of Orange County’s leading local historians, said Phil Brigandi, the county’s archivist, who had known “the delightful, grand lady” for at least 20 years.

“Ellen had a genuine commitment to this story of Modjeska being told, and being told well,” Brigandi said.

Her research on the actress took Lee to Poland twice and to London, Berlin and various theaters in the U.S. where Modjeska performed with such leading men as Maurice Barrymore and Edwin Booth, the brother of Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth.

When not traveling, Modjeska and her husband, known as Count Bozenta, lived from 1888 to 1906 on the estate designed by renowned architect Stanford White in a wooded area now called Modjeska Canyon.

After Lee helped persuade Orange County to buy the house and surrounding 14 acres in 1986, her knowledge of Modjeska’s life was crucial to restoring the building, planning exhibits, writing educational materials and training docents.

“She was a stickler for details,” said Krystyna Sampler, one of the seven women who started the foundation. “She had interviewed people who knew Modjeska. If you asked her a question, it was as if you turned the key and it flowed.”

At the time of her death, Lee was working on a book on Modjeska, but other elements of local history also captivated her.

Lee’s 1973 book, “Newport Bay: A Pioneer History,” was praised in 1975 by the Journal of San Diego History for its “diligent” original research. It chronicled the “discovery” of the bay in 1860 and went through the 1940s, when the harbor was temporarily closed during World War II.

For her first book, “Old Newport: The Seaport Years” (1970), Lee tape-recorded interviews with pioneer Ramona Duarte Castle and wove a story of what it was like to grow up in Newport in the late 1800s.

She was born Ellen Kerl on Aug. 6, 1918, in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, to Thomas and Lola Kerl. Her father was a lawyer who owned corn and soybean farms in Nebraska.

Lee’s interest in history was nurtured by an Idaho childhood in which farmers drove wooden wagons and Indians appeared at the door selling wild huckleberries.

At Wellesley College, Lee studied English literature, earning her bachelor’s degree in 1938.

Three years later, she married and by the late 1940s had moved to Los Angeles -- partly because the couple sought warmer weather.

In 1956 she moved to Newport Beach, where Lee raised her family, lectured and wrote about local history, mainly for historical journals.

As computers and the Internet made research easier, she once confided that she kind of missed the days when “it was much more of an adventure to find the facts.”

In addition to her son, John, of Santa Monica, Lee is survived by her husband of 64 years, retired Superior Court Judge William S. Lee; and three other sons, William S. Lee Jr. of Santa Cruz; Thomas F. Lee of Seaside; and Richard H. Lee of Laguna Nigel; and two grandchildren.

The family requests that instead of flowers, memorial donations be made in Lee’s name to any charity.