Frederick Lea, 95; helped care for Buchenwald's freed prisoners

“We entered the camp and were led on a tour by a collection of gaunt, emaciated figures in ragged striped prison clothing bearing colored patches that identified their nationality, or as a Jew. It became more and more evident that the prisoners had been dehumanized,’’ Mr. Lea said in his oral history, “Recollections of a Liberator,’’ which is on file at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. “My senses were numbed by the sight of the conditions, the emaciated bodies, the stench of human waste, and an awful feeling of hopelessness.’’

Mr. Lea only began to actively share his experience after he was approached by someone collecting oral histories of the war at his 50th high school reunion. After that, he would speak out against violence, anti-Semitism, and racism — in classrooms, churches, and on college campuses.

“He realized people like him who had actually seen the horrors were dying off and there was more revisionist history being spoken of or written,’’ said his son, Jeffrey of Fairfield, Conn.

Mr. Lea, a commander with the 46th Armored Medical Battalion Company in the Fourth Armored Division that was part of General George Patton’s Third Army, ordered the establishment of an evacuation hospital for the liberated prisoners of Buchenwald. He was awarded a Bronze Star, a medical combat badge, and five campaign stars for his service, his family said.

Mr. Lea died on Feb. 18 of complications related to temporal arteritis at the Harrington House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Walpole. He was 95.

Mr. Lea spent 43 years at the Devoe Paint Division of Celanese Coatings before retiring as a regional sales manager based at their offices in Boston in 1980. He started out as a chemist but quickly switched to sales, traveling throughout the Northeast selling large quantities of paint to contractors. Jeffrey said his father’s work required him to be away from home at least three nights a week for nearly every week of the year. He waited until he was retired to indulge in the hobby of golf so he could spend as much time with his children as possible on weekends.

Mr. Lea was born on Prince Edward Island in Canada, and he moved to Hull in 1925. He attended Hingham High School, graduating in 1933, and earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry at Boston University in 1937.

At BU, Mr. Lea met Martha Taylor, who would become his wife of 68 years. She was the younger sister of his fraternity brother, and Mr. Lea would eat dinner at their house every Saturday, Jeffrey said.

Mr. Lea and his wife lived in Westwood for 58 years before they moved to New Pond Village in Walpole in 2008. He was a 60-year member of the First Parish of Westwood, where he would mentor younger members preparing for their first communion.

In addition to his wife and son, Mr. Lea leaves a daughter, Lucinda of Philadelphia; his sisters Marion Cushing of Arlington and Helen Edmunds of Huntingtown, Md., and a granddaughter.

Services have been held and a burial is planned for early summer at the Quaker Cemetery in North Sandwich, N.H.

Neal Riley can be reached at nriley@globe.com.