Lyle Lancaster, a life-long Grays Harbor resident and businessman, directed in his will that his entire estate should be used to establish a permanent scholarship endowment fund for gifted students from Grays Harbor and Pacific Counties.  This fund, established in 1999 upon Lyle’s death, is now the core of the Grays Harbor Community Foundation’s scholarship program.

Born in 1903 to Elma pioneers Roy and Nora Randall Lancaster, Lyle began his working career in Grays Harbor’s thriving logging industry.  Lyle’s next step was to purchase a print shop in Aberdeen, which he later sold to start up Lancaster’s, a gift and hobby shop at the corner of Market and Broadway in downtown Aberdeen.

He married Gertrude Morrison in 1928 and kept their marriage strong until her death in 1987. In retirement, he maintained a large garden and raised rhododendrons and orchids around his Central Park home.  All who knew Lyle knew him as a fiercely independent, honest, and hard-working individual.

Well read and keenly interested in the world around him, Lyle became in his later years deeply concerned with how to better young people’s lives through education.  This concern ultimately led him to establish what would become the Grays Harbor Community Foundation Scholarship Program.  While Lyle and Gertrude had no children of their own, their legacy will continue to benefit the children of countless generations to come.