(Born: November 6, 1904 - Refolded: May 5, 1988)
Lao Russell born Daisy Grace Cook in Buckinghamshire, England. Lao changed her name (after the Chinese mystic Lao-Tzu) when she married Walter Russell in 1948. Lao was a precocious child and entered business ventures as a young woman and found financial success. She married business partner Lionel Stebbing and together they made a fortune. That relationship soured, however, and Lao drifted for some years, meeting people, traveling, and searching for meaning. After World War II began in Europe, Lao sought refuge in the United States, which she entered in 1940. She settled in Boston, did volunteer work, formed lasting friendships, continued her voracious reading, and had a brief mystical experience. She gravitated toward the Boston Home of Truth (Eleanor Mel’s New Thought outpost), read Glenn Clark’s biography of Walter Russell, and called him in 1946. Lao was Walter’s “soul mate.” Together they wrote books, established the University of Science and Philosophy in 1957, and lived and worked at the mountaintop palace called Swannanoa in Afton, Virginia.