Dr. Howard Lee Myerhoff

Dr. Howard Lee Myerhoff, known to everyone as Lee, died peacefully and painlessly in Los Angeles on October 3, 2026, three days shy of his 95th birthday. He died the way he had always said he wanted to: autonomous and in control of his own fate, while he still had his mind and his personality.

In his final days, Lee was surrounded by family and loved ones. He said goodbye, and they said goodbye to him, while he was fully present and fully himself. They reminisced, laughed, shed tears, ate, drank, and raised a glass to his life and his death. It was a celebration of an extraordinary life, with its guest of honor in the room.

Early life

Lee was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Martha and Dick Myerhoff and grew up in Sea Gate, the gated seaside community at the tip of Coney Island. He was a Boy Scout, and he later described himself as a soft and vulnerable child, bullied by the non-Jewish kids in the neighborhood.

He found refuge in his own mind. Smart and artistic, he was a favorite of his teachers. He never cared for team sports, and when his classmates went to see the Dodgers play, he skipped school and went to the American Museum of Natural History instead. His fascination with nature, biology, and natural history lasted his whole life. He passed it on to his children and the rest of his family, and it shaped how he lived, through backpacking, camping, skiing, scuba diving, sailing, and travel.

In 1947, when Lee was 16, the family moved across the country to North Hollywood, California. While at Los Angeles City College, he began a relationship with Barbara Siegel, who would become his first wife.

Building a life

In 1953, Lee was drafted into the U.S. Army, where he taught map reading and ran the mail for his company at Fort Ord. He married Barbara in 1954, and a month later he shipped out to Munich, Germany, where he drove a school bus. Barbara joined him that year, and they lived in a tiny apartment with a shared bathroom until his discharge in March 1955. The young couple then explored Europe until returning home in September 1956.

Back in California, they started with almost nothing. They lived in a small bedroom Lee’s father built behind Barbara’s parents’ garage, then moved from apartment to apartment, including a stint living at a Santa Monica dog and cat clinic. Eventually they bought a home on Fulton Avenue in the San Fernando Valley. In 1968, Lee and Barbara both completed their PhDs, and their son Nick was born. In 1971, Matt was born. As a young family, they traveled extensively, exposing their sons to different places and cultures.

Lee and Barbara divorced in 1983. In 1984, Lee moved into Jackie Sant’s home in Northridge, where they married and brought together Lee’s sons, Matt and Nick, and Jackie’s children, David, Adam, and Jennifer, to create a new family. Barbara Myerhoff died in 1985. Jackie Sant-Myerhoff passed away in 2015.

A career of helping people

Lee earned his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Southern California in 1968 and became a licensed California psychologist in 1971. For more than five decades, he kept a general practice, treating clients from adolescence to old age. The heart of his work was marriage and couples counseling, in which the couple itself is the client, and he helped gay, lesbian, and heterosexual couples alike. He had real success treating anxiety and depression, and for decades he also specialized in treating geriatric clients. He liked to joke that he was older than all of them.

His approach was eclectic, drawing on psychodynamic, Gestalt, Rogerian, cognitive-behavioral, and solution-focused methods, and shaped to what each person needed. He prized empathy and directness in himself and in the people he worked with. He was a member of the American Psychological Association and the Los Angeles County Psychological Association.

In his later years, Lee worked at the San Fernando Valley Community Mental Health Center in Van Nuys, where he supervised psychologists-in-training. He took great pride in mentoring and supervising the next generation of therapists and continued until August 2026, shortly before he passed. He loved the work intellectually, but mostly because it helped people.

Love, friendship, and joy

Lee loved fully and unabashedly, and he took devoted care of the people in his life. When he looked back, he named his happiest moments as the births of his children, his marriage to Barbara, his marriage to Jackie, his marriage to Tamara, and the simple times spent enjoying life with family and loved ones.

Decades ago, Lee and Tamara Klumpe worked together at the student counseling center at California State University, Northridge, where a friendship began that lasted the rest of their lives. In 2022, seven years after Jackie’s passing, that friendship grew into romance, and they married in September 2023. Both were psychologists, and their time together was short but full: love, fun, friends and family, laughter, intellectual curiosity, and a shared love of psychology.

Lee’s appetite for life was enormous. He loved art, music, culture, theater, travel, food, and a good party. He loved beauty and the outdoors, and he sought adventure by running, cycling, and riding motorcycles. He was happiest with his dogs, in his garden, among birds and plants, or lost in a good book. And he loved to laugh. His family can barely remember a time together when they weren’t laughing.

Burning Man

Lee was proud to be part of the Burning Man community. He attended eight times: seven with Jackie, and once without her, when he carried her ashes to the Temple for a memorial after she passed. He loved the community, the excitement, the art and music, the counter-culture energy, and the joyful celebration of life. Many there loved him, admired his youthful spirit, and saw him as a role model for living a joyful, rich life in old age.

Remembering Lee

Being capable, independent, and a caretaker of his loved ones was essential to Lee. His family is deeply grateful that he was able to live independently in his beloved home until just five weeks before he passed, looking after himself, his wife Tamara, and their dog Mikey.

Among the greatest gifts Lee gave his family was his full embrace of living an authentic life. He brought people together with his inclusive spirit - so many of his family members and loved ones would not be here, or would never have known each other, were it not for him. He showed us how to love, how to laugh, and how to enjoy life to the fullest, and he taught by example that love, friendship, nature, and experiences matter far more than money, professional success, or material things. His family is grateful for his guidance, support, understanding, acceptance, and unwavering principles. He lived with intention, loved without reservation, and met the end of his life on his own terms.

Lee was preceded in death by his parents, Martha and Dick Myerhoff; his first wife, Barbara Myerhoff, the renowned anthropologist; and his second wife, Jackie Sant-Myerhoff. He is survived by his wife, Tamara Klumpe; his children, Nick, Matt, David, Adam, and Jennifer; his grandchildren, Elsa, Mathilda, Alec, Alexis, Brandy, and Victoria; his children’s spouses Alice, Danielle, Jammie, and Fran; his sisters Barbara and Wini, many nieces and nephews; and countless loved ones.

Lee supported many environmental, political, social justice, and humanitarian organizations. In honor of Lee and his memory, the family suggests donations to the Los Angeles LGBT Center, the American Civil Liberties Union, or The Nature Conservancy.