“She was someone who was able to channel the grief she felt about her daughter’s loss into a very productive effort to prevent other families from having to go through the same sort of tragedy,’’ said John Auerbach, the state’s public health commissioner. “Mrs. Lehman was insightful, gracious, and thoughtful about the ways that government could play an active role in terms of trying to improve quality of care.’’

At the Globe, Betsy Lehman had used her columns to untangle the complexities of health care for readers.

“One point about Mildred I always respected was that she didn’t want the center to be a memorial to Betsy’s death,’’ said Nancy Ridley, former executive director of the Betsy Lehman Center. “She wanted it to be a celebration of her life, of her professional work to educate consumers.’’

Born Mildred Kharfen in Cherry Valley, Pa., Mrs. Lehman was 2 when her mother died just as her father was engineering a move to run a New Hampshire factory that made manicure instruments.

Until he fully settled in New England, she was raised by her maternal grandmother, a warm relationship Mrs. Lehman reprised in reverse decades later when her daughter died.

While still a child, she moved to Keene, N.H., where she won academic awards, was captain of a championship basketball team, and graduated from high school at 16 in 1934.

She attended a college in Pittsburgh before graduating from Simmons College in Boston, where she majored in English.

After a foray into graduate work that included studying in Vermont with the poet Robert Frost at Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School, she worked at newspapers in New Jersey during World War II.

Through a cousin she met Milton Lehman, a war correspondent for the Stars and Stripes military newspaper.

“They connected very readily,’’ Katz said. “They had the same values and the same interests, and they were both writers and felt that was a wonderful way to live and work.’’