Harold Ward III Leaves Long Legacy as a Community Caretaker
Ward died on Monday at age 92
April 3, 2026
By Beth Kassab
Harold Ward III, the well-known lawyer who helped shape modern Winter Park as an advisor to the city’s most prominent philanthropic foundations and institutions, was known for his modest and likable persona mixed with a scholarly command of the law.
Ward died Monday after a brief illness. He was 92.
“Harold was a very humble person and you wouldn’t know he was behind as much as he was behind,” said Doug Woodman, trustee and executive vice president and treasurer of the Elizabeth Morse Genius Foundation and Charles Hosmer Morse Foundation.
Woodman said that until recently Ward, a longtime trustee for the groups, still spent several mornings a week at the foundations’ office on North Park Avenue.
On Friday his desk was neat and tidy just the way he always kept it with a photo of his wife of 66 years Mary Lewis “Libby” Ward, who died in 2024.
“That was the most important thing he had on his desk … he was a really dedicated family man,” Woodman said, recalling how his mother, Louise, and Libby became friends and attended the first annual Winter Park Sidewalk Art Festival together.
Harold Ward, center, attended an event for Rollins College, where he chaired the board of trustees multiple times.
Their husbands were both partners at Winderweedle, Haines, Ward and Woodman where Ward eventually became known for his estate planning practice.
He started at the firm in 1960, choosing to return to Winter Park after law school at the University of Chicago and a clerkship with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black and a stint as an attorney for the U.S. Air Force.
It was in the D.C. area where he met Libby, who worked for IBM and held a degree in mathematics from William & Mary.
David Odahowski, president and chief executive of Edyth Bush Charitable Foundation, said the Wards often had Sunday dinner with Justice Black and would drive him on road trips to Florida, where the justice also had relatives.
“Harold and Libby — the two of them could have stayed at the hub of everything, but the tug of Winter Park brought them back,” Odahowski said.
“When you think about Harold, you think about the movie ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ and Harold was starring as George Bailey,” but in his own story, he said, with Winter Park as his version of the film’s Bedford Falls.
Ward was a founding trustee and incorporating member of the Edyth Bush foundation, which has awarded more than $114 million to support the local arts, education, health care and more.
His roots were intrinsically tied to the founding of Winter Park, where he grew up and attended Winter Park High School where he played the double bell euphonium in the band, according to his daughter Mary Christian.
Charles Hosmer Morse, once the city’s largest landholder who donated the property for Central Park and the first town hall, hired Ward’s grandfather to help run his company.
The younger Ward was a friend of Morse’s granddaughter Jeannette Genius McKean and her husband Rollins College President Hugh McKean.
Jeanette McKean started the Morse and Genius foundations in honor of her grandfather and mother and Ward served terms as chairman of those boards as well as chairman of the trustees of Rollins College. The Morse foundation operates the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art and the Genius foundation provides funds for that endeavor as well as other charitable causes around town.
“In meetings, he was always the guy who asked the question that nobody else thought of,” Woodman recalled.
With the loss of Ward comes the loss of “an incredible amount of institutional knowledge.”
But Ward was also far more than his work, Christian said.
She said she remembers her dad being home just about every night by 6 p.m. for dinner with the family and always took time off for summer road trips that the family spent months planning.
“He was a wonderful dad. He would do anything for us and that translated to the kind of person and caretaker he was for the community,” said Christian, who lives in Maitland and also serves as a trustee on the Genius Foundation. “He was just very committed and dutiful … I know he was proud of the things he did, but he didn’t talk about himself in that way.”
Ward was also devoted to First Congregational Church of Winter Park where his family has been members since 1886. The church will hold a service for Ward on May 2 at 11 a.m.
In addition to Christian, Ward is survived by daughter Cathy McNamara and son Tom Ward, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
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I worked at WHW&W as a Tax & Fiduciary Assistant when all the founders except for “Red” were there. I always felt I was around one of the smartest people I would ever meet when in the presence of Mr. Ward. I learned through that professional relationship to always do the best work I could do, being absolutely sure there were no mistakes before presenting it. I carried that ethos throughout my career, and always did, and still do, thinking of and thanking Mr. Ward for that. Rest in peace Sir.