Isabelle Scott with her son, Scott Rosenberg
Isabelle Scott (whose given name was Fredrica Lehrman) was born on October 16, 1940, in Washington, D.C., where she attended the National Cathedral School. While earning a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Virginia, she received the Philip Francis du Pont Fellowship and the Virginia Mason Davidge Fellowship. She was an award-winning professor of literature and poetry at Howard University and at The George Washington University.
In her later years, she became an attorney focusing on families at risk, and she was the author of Domestic Violence Practice and Procedure, a comprehensive treatise on domestic violence law in the United States. Isabelle authored sections of The Impact of Domestic Violence on Your Legal Practice: A Lawyer’s Handbook, published by the American Bar Association’s Commission on Domestic Violence, and served as the book’s coeditor. She appeared on a nationally televised panel moderated by Tim Russert, addressing the subject of violence in America, with then–Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and George Stephanopoulis. She was also the coauthor of The Soul in Balance: The Gardens of the Washington National Cathedral.
Despite being deaf, Isabelle trained for years with vocalist Rosa Lamoreaux tolearn how to sing, and in 2007 became an inaugural member of the Cathedral Voices, the National Cathedral’s volunteer choir. She also founded the Girls Choristers of the National Cathedral—the first girls’ choir in a major American cathedral. In her final months, she collaborated with Rosa to create a musical version of her poem Hear the Angels Sing, which was subsequently performed at the Cathedral. In collaboration with her son, Scott Rosenberg, she also completed a special-edition print of her watercolor painting of a wild rose, as well as two book-length poems that she had begun some years earlier: Persephone, Child of Springtime, based on the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, and Dancing to the Music of Spring, a children’s story. Isabelle Scott died on November 15, 2010, surrounded by love.
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Persephone, Child of Springtime |
Rose, watercolor and pencil on paper |
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Hear the Angels Sing |