Chautauqua's Hostess

Chautauqua's Hostess:
Winnie of the Wensley House

By Wendy Lewellen

Winnie Lewellen served as hostess at worldfamous
Chautauqua Institution's Wensley
House for three decades. The nine-room guest
house provided accommodations for the best
and the brightest who provided the program
for this cultural and recreational mecca in
upstate New York. This book, written by
Winnie's daughter, Wendy Lewellen, draws
from her mother's thirty-year accumulation of
photographs and memorabilia.
Winnie died unexpectedly in 2006 before she
got around to writing the memoir she always
intended to craft. Wendy shares in its stead,
this contribution to the celebrity-saturated
history of the Wensley House, of Chautauqua
Institution, and of Chautauqua County.
Proceeds from this labor of love will finance
the Winnie Lewellen Memorial Scholarship
at the high school where she taught Latin and
English in nearby Bemus Point, New York.