Husband, father, WWII veteran, business CEO, community developer, and philanthropist, Leland R. Nicholson, died December 24, 2015.  He was proud to call Carrington his native hometown (born 1924).  Lee always tried his best to make better the places he lived and to contribute positively to his family and friends. 

While a youth in Carrington, he was best known for high school athletics.  He was a high school football, basketball, and track captain.  His abilities earned a college football scholarship to Northwestern University.  However, college was interrupted by Pearl Harbor attack, which inspired Nicholson to join the Marine Corps.  He was trained as one of the first crew of RADAR technicians.  This meant secret missions to setup quick radar stations, one of which was Iwo Jima.  During his stent in the Marines, Lee met his life-long love (married 56 years).  Corporal Virginia E. Blair was a fellow Marine from New York City.  They married in Washington D.C. immediately after the War in 1946, and took advantage of the GI Bill to go back to college.  They choose to return to Lee's home State of North Dakota where Lee attended University of North Dakota in Grand Forks.  There they lived and worked as custodians in the Methodist church and had their first child, Heather Lee.

When Lee graduated with an electrical engineering degree, he went to work for Minnkota Power Cooperative in Grand Forks.  He moved his family to a bigger apartment over a chicken hatchery.  While at the Co-op, he helped to spread the use of electricity to the rural farm areas.

Lee was offered a marketing job at Kansas Power and Light in Topeka, Kansas and the family moved.  This time the move included the addition of their young son, Leland Blair.  They now moved to a new, post-war, three bed room tract home.

Topeka, KS was to be their home for most of Lee and Gini's career.  They had their third child, Holly Kay and Gini elected to staye home to raise the children.  In 1965, they built a new home by Lake Shawnee.  While at KP&L Lee eventually rose to be the COO of the Company.  He pushed for the then new technology of environmental scrubbers on the coal plants. Also designed/built portable substations for emergency outages to be used anywhere in the world.  Lee and Gini were also active as Boy and Girl Scout Leaders and in the Chamber of Commerce. 

In the early 1990s, Lee was put in charge of a new acquisition, Kansas City Gas and Electric Company, as the CEO.  The family had grown and moved away, so Lee and Gini moved to the Santa Fe Tower in Crown Center, Kansas City.  While CEO, Lee initiated rebuilding the aging underground gas lines to eliminate gas catastrophes. He also mandated that no gas services would ever be cut to non-paying customers when the temperature dipped below 35 degrees.  He set up free bus passes for inner city youth so they could get to their jobs.

Upon retirement Lee and Gini moved to Lake Gaston in Bracey, Virginia.  This made them closer to two of their three children's young families.  While retired the Nicholson's became very involved in their new community.  Gini set up a college scholarship fund for high school students wanting to be elementary school teachers.  Lee joined the Board of the South Hill Community Memorial Hospital as head of the Foundation and helped raised/donated millions of dollars for the Hospital's projects.  He was also foundation chair of the South Hill Rotary Club, member of the Marine Corp League, American Legion Post 79, and the South Hill Chamber of Commerce.

His three children, seven grandchildren, and 20 great grand children survive Lee.  Gini preceded Lee in death in 2002.  As his Rotary Club expressed, "His absence will be very greatly noted". 

A moment of remembrance in Lee's honor will be observed September 13, 2016, at

( o'clock) during a Graveside Service in Carrington Cemetery, Carrington, ND.