Lucile (Wolf) Heming Koshland, 1898-1978

Lucile Wolf Heming Koshland, political and civic volunteer, was born in New York City in 1898. She attended private schools in New York and spent a year at Vassar College before entering Barnard College, from which she graduated in 1919. She married Charles E. Heming, who died in 1929. In 1959 she married Daniel Koshland, Sr., former president of Levi-Strauss, and moved to California, where she lived until her death in 1978.

LWHK was president of the League of Women Voters of New York State; she was also the first president (1947-1953) of the Carrie Chapman Catt Memorial Fund (later the Overseas Education Fund), member of its Board of Directors, and trustee until 1966.

The CCCMF, a research and educational fund, was established in 1947 by the LWV of the U.S. in memory of the League's founder, Carrie Chapman Catt. At the close of World War II, the League received numerous requests from the State Department suggesting that it sponsor programs to promote the application of democratic principles and civic education among women abroad. Because the League had neither the financial nor professional resources to meet these requests, it created the CCCMF as a financially and legally independent organization, "to impart to men and women in all parts of the world a knowledge of the principles and workings of self-government." It sponsored visits to the U.S. by foreign women, organized exchange programs, and fostered literacy programs abroad. A publications fund was established with the sale of a sapphire brooch given to Carrie Chapman Catt in gratitude for her work in gaining passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Publications included German and Japanese translations of Simplified Rules of Parliamentary Procedure, bulletins, progress reports, and pamphlets on voter education. Always a "two-way street," the exchanges also benefitted American members who learned a great deal from the interaction with countries abroad.

With the expansion of the program, the name was changed to the Overseas Education Fund, although it maintained the structure and functions of the CCCMF.

From the guide to the Papers, 1947-1974, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)