Lee Whittredge Katzenbach
June 10, 1942 – November 21, 2024
Lee Katzenbach was born in New York City in 1942. He always thought that was amusing since his life was so far removed from busy urban life. He was happiest in the presence of nature—birds, insects reptiles, skies, oceans. He moved to Patagonia from Port Townsend, WA with his wife, Ann, because he also loved sunshine and the northwest doesn’t have a lot of that.
He might have been an architect were it not for his dyslexic brain that could barely do simple arithmetic. However, during his life he designed and rebuilt many homes, studios, and small buildings. Unfortunately the house he designed in Patagonia was on Harshaw Road.
He lived in Massachusetts while he was single, and when he met Ann, they decided to buy property on the small island of Carriacou in the West Indies. They opened a small hotel and after four years of being hospitable 24/7, they sold the property and moved to Port Townsend, WA in 1992. There Lee continued to design and remodel houses, sheds, chicken coops, a pizza oven and a meditation hut. He was part of a cooperative gallery and a popular artist.
When he began to search for sunshine after the winter of 2013, he discovered Patagonia—a perfect fit for his unconventional art and love of nature. Every day he watched the skies change over Mount Wrightson and Red Mountain. He had many friends and hiked with a group of mountain explorers on Sunday afternoons.
But the trucks, the noise, the brazen wheeling and dealing of mining capitalism, drove him and Ann away in 2017.
After some more moves (Philadelphia, coastal Massachusetts) Lee and Ann moved back to Washington and because Lee was showing signs of dementia, a family curse, they moved to a supportive retirement community where he died on November 21, having decided to stop eating and drinking before his dementia overtook him.
The desert, with its wonderful skies and creatures and weather delighted this New Englander. He did some of his best work here in his enormous studio—a series of small boats that rocked in the wind, many watercolors, drawings, sculptures and a house.