Lois Forrest, leader in care for elderly
Lois Bonsted Forrest, 82, of Medford, died Sunday, Nov. 1, of complications from Alzheimer's disease at Medford Leas, the continuing-care retirement community where she was executive director from 1979 to 2001.
Lois Bonsted Forrest, 82, of Medford, died Sunday, Nov. 1, of complications from Alzheimer's disease at Medford Leas, the continuing-care retirement community where she was executive director from 1979 to 2001.
During her term, her daughter Loyce Forrest said, the firm added sites in Mount Holly in 1982 and Lumberton in 1999.
The New Jersey Association of Non-Profit Homes for the Aging in Princeton, of which she was a board member from 1989 to 1992, gave her its Distinguished Service Award in 1992.
In the early 2000s, after volunteer work with several Quaker agencies, she served as the clerk for the Medford Monthly Meeting, her daughter said.
"I knew Lois in the 1970s and 1980s, at the American Friends Service Committee" in Philadelphia, said George Rubin, a retired podiatrist and member of the Medford Meeting.
"She was a very important part of the forward progress of the Service Committee, in strategic planning," Rubin said.
Mrs. Forrest and her husband, Harry, were Friends in Residence at the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre in England from 2004 through 2006.
When they returned to Medford, Rubin said, the Forrests brought a Woodbrooke outreach program to encourage outsiders to sample a Quaker meeting. "She was very active," Rubin said.
Mrs. Forrest showed her "extraordinary compassion," her daughter said, when "she started a day-care center at Medford Leas so the employees could have their children close by while they worked."
Besides that, she said, Mrs. Forrest "developed a scholarship fund for employees so they could advance their educations."
Mrs. Forrest grew up in Northeast Philadelphia, attended Philadelphia High for Girls, and later, in the early 1980s, earned a bachelor's degree from Thomas Edison State College in Trenton.
She began her career in the early 1960s, as a YWCA volunteer in Bristol, Bucks County, where, her daughter said, "she worked with women on improving job skills."
When her husband's employer, the Boy Scouts of America, transferred him to Cleveland, she worked as a YWCA program director there from 1965 to 1973.
She then served as executive director of the YWCA in Philadelphia before taking that position at Medford Leas, her daughter said.
At one time a board member and treasurer for the American Friends Service Committee, she was one of four Americans whom the committee sent to the Republic of South Africa in 1981 to confer with opponents of the government policy of apartheid.
She worked as a volunteer with two entities of the Quaker headquarters in Philadelphia.
From 1988 to 2000, she was president of the Friends Fiduciary Corp., a nonprofit providing investment management to Quaker organizations.
In the mid-1990s, she was a personnel committee member of the Friends General Conference, an association of Quaker communities across the nation and in Canada.
Besides her daughter Loyce and her husband, Mrs. Forrest is survived by sons Eric and Jeffrey; a daughter, Karen Forrest; nine grandchildren; and a sister.
A memorial service was set for 10 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 19, in the auditorium at Medford Leas.
Donations may be sent to www.alz.org/donate.
Condolences may be offered to the family at www.lechnerfuneralhome.com.
610-313-8134@WNaedele