Lucy Claiborne Ritter Skeen, a Baltimore City Schools administrator recalled as an “extraordinary entertainer,” died of cancer May 7 at Gilchrist Center Towson. The Roland Park resident was 75. Born in Baltimore and raised on Chestnut Avenue in Towson, she was the daughter of Roy Horace Ritter, a president of engineering firm Whitman Requardt & Associates, and Mary Claiborne, the first woman admitted to the Virginia State Bar.
She was a 1967 Roland Park Country School graduate and class vice president. She earned a history and economics degree at Hollins University in Virginia. In the summer of 1968, she went to Brazil on a missionary trip and built houses.
“She said she built houses poorly, as she told the story,” said her son Roy Skeen. She became a Samuel Ready School history teacher, a librarian at the Church of the Redeemer and a sales clerk in Cross Keys. In 1975, after attending the old Paralegal Institute of Philadelphia, she began work as an employee benefits paralegal at the law firm Whiteford, Taylor, and Preston.
She went on to be a vice president of marketing at T. Rowe Price, the investment firm. “She was the best friend anyone could have,” said Natalie McSherry, a friend of 40 years.
“She truly lit up every room she walked into. Her personality was enormous.” In the early 1980s, Ms.
Skeen raised her family and did volunteer work with the Junior League of Baltimore and served a year as the group’s president. She became executive director of the.
