Graeme Lorimer

Graeme Lorimer, 80, author, editor and Philadelphia civic leader, died yesterday at his home in Chatham, Mass., on Cape Cod.

Injured in a fall in April, his return to Magnet Stone Farm, his home in Great Valley outside Paoli in Chester County, had been postponed pending his recovery.

He had fractured his shoulder and pelvis in the fall. The mending was slowed by age, but he had seemed to be gaining strength for the trip when he suffered a fatal aneurysm.

His death ended nearly 60 years of public service. He was a leader of the Philadelphia Foundation, the Pennsylvania Society to Protect Children From Cruelty and the National Council on Community Foundations. He also served on a number of civic bodies, headed the Philadelphia Award committee and was a member of the board of governors of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

He was an associate editor of the Saturday Evening Post, the Ladies Home Journal and the Country Gentleman magazines. He collaborated with his wife, Sarah, in writing the "Maudie" stories for teenagers.

He was the author of a play on which the 1948 Paramount movie June Bride, starring Bette Davis and Robert Montgomery, was based.

And in between, he managed to find time to serve on other boards, such as that of the directors of the Girard Bank.

Personal tragedies slowed his pace. A son-in-law and daughter were killed in a 1972 accident; Mr. and Mrs. Lorimer's only son, George 2d, died five years ago at the age of 46.

One by one, Mr. Lorimer gave up his interests, his civic pursuits, to serve as a father to seven of his grandchildren. And his mind turned more and more toward making Magnet Stone Farm - two sparkling ponds, a white stone house, broad meadows and acres of lush growth in old fields reclaimed by nature for warblers, fox and deer - into a preserve.

Fifty-seven acres of the 114-acre farm were donated three years ago to the Open Land Conservancy of Chester County as the George Lorimer Nature Preserve, a tranquil wood with rows of roses and ash, maple, dogwood, cherry and crabapple open to children and adults.

His wife said last night that he had been eager to return to their home in the Great Valley so that he could get on with expanding the preserve.

"He felt that our beautiful land had to be held in trust so that our children and our children's children can see what this land once looked like. Our son loved this land as we loved this land.

"It was part of our life and it should be part of theirs," his wife said. Friends and associates said his creation of the preserve fitted the pattern of his life. He worked for others.

An example came during the war while he was in Washington working with the Office of War Information. After the death of Ernie Pyle, Congress adopted - partially in tribute - the GI Bill of Rights, legislation that provided for the education of veterans.

Immediately, a great clamor arose from the veterans hospitals across the nation. The wounded wanted to get started. Valley Forge Hospital was at the head of the list.

Officials there found most of their veterans wanted to learn to write - business letters, commercial work, fiction - and Mr. Lorimer was put on call. He responded and in the months near the end of the war, taught the wounded and crippled how to write and how to sell their craft.

Since many of his students at the hospital were blind, unable to use their hands or, at best, limited in their movements, he had to teach by lecture. Mind-to-mind work," his wife called it.

It was a byproduct of his own learning, which had enabled him to turn his talent into money. He built it into a career with Curtis Publishing Co. and taught his wife in the process. They produced 40 books.

Surviving, in addition to his wife, Sarah Moss Lorimer, are three daughters, Sarah Morris, Belle Robb and Anne Sirna; 18 grandsons, nine granddaughters and six great-grandchildren.

Services are planned for 4 p.m. Monday at St. Asaph's Church in Bala Cynwyd.

FamilySearch data

• Birth: Feb 7 1903 - Wyncote, Montgomery, Pennsylvania, United States
• Death: Sep 7 1983 - Chatham, Barnstable, Massachusetts, United States
• Parents: George Horace Lorimer, Alma Viola Lorimer (born Ennis)
• Wife: Sarah Hunter Lorimer (born Moss)
• Siblings: George Burford Lorimer, George Claude Lorimer, Georgia Belle Lorimer, Belle Burford Lorimer

bibliography

• Graeme Lorimer, Sarah Lorimer
  • Little, Brown, 1949 - 240 pages

bio in obit

https://www.newspapers.com/image/172063767/?terms=%22Belle%2BRobb%22 The Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) 07 Sep 1983, Wed Page 49

family connections

The Lorimer and the Wildman families lived quite near each other in the Great Valley, Tredyfferin township, Chester co., PA They are blood relatives through the Hunter family name. State Sen. Theodore Lane Bean married a Hunter. In April 1937 bean spoke before an assemblage of Republican women at the Hannah Penn House in Philadelphia. This organization was then headed by Mrs. Alma V. Lorimer who is related to Sen. Bean as follows:

Theodore Lane Bean is Alma Viola Lorimer (Ennis)'s son's wife's aunt's husband: Alma Viola Lorimer (Ennis)→ Graeme Lorimer, her son → Sarah Lorimer (Moss), his wife → Rebecca Anna Moss (Hunter), her mother → Sarah Albertson Bean (Hunter), her sister → Theodore Lane Bean, her husband

the Albertson banking family of Norristown.