She created two major pieces for the Resettlement Administration's planned community in Greenbelt, Maryland—Mother and Child[4] and several panels illustrating the Preamble to the United States Constitution.

[5] Along with other Public Works Administration artists Hugh Collins, Carmelo Arutu, and Joseph Goethe, she created playground sculpture for Langston Terrace, the first federally funded housing project in Washington, DC.

[6] In the early 1940s, when she was living in Accokeek, Maryland, she married Robert Ware Straus, who was to play an integral role in the preservation of the view across the Potomac River from George Washington's home at Mount Vernon and the formation of the Moyaone Reserve.

[8] In 1968, she moved to Maine, where she was a student of zen teacher Walter Nowick at Moonspring Hermitage[9] in Surry, which later became the Morgan Bay zendo.

[11] According to FBI files related to the House Un-American Activities Committee, Lenore Thomas Straus was investigated and admitted that she had joined the Communist Party while working for the government in 1935.