Obituary
Joyce Ann Lilie
1941 – 2021
Joyce Lilie died peacefully in her sleep July 8, 2021 at her home in Winter Park, Florida. Joyce was born Joyce Ann Rohr on July 4, 1941 in the Dailey, West Virginia Homestead house first occupied by her grandparents in 1934. She is survived by her husband of 56 years, Stuart A. Lilie. She is also survived by her brother-in-law Lyle Lilie and his wife Elizabeth McCosh-Lilie of Ashford, Connecticut; sister-in-law Janice Rohr of Cumberland, Maryland; cousin Sharon Herbach Cox who now lives in the Dailey Homestead house; nephews Brad and Rudy Rohr of Ceredo, West Virginia; cousins Mike McConnell, Sally Dupin and Betty Dyer from Northern Kentucky; and cousins Alan Rowold, Paul Rowold and Gail Metzler from St. Louis. She will be missed by her many friends here and in Miami who have become part of her virtual family.
Joyce attended the Homestead school and Elkins High in the 1950s. She received her BA degree from Marshall University and her doctorate in Political Science from The Johns Hopkins University in 1970. In graduate school she met Stuart and they were married in 1965.
Her first teaching position was at the University of Missouri St. Louis before moving to Florida in 1972. She taught 13 years at Florida International University and moved to the University of Central Florida as Political Science chair in 1985. She also served for several years as acting chair of the UCF Art Department. While a respected and effective administrator her first love was teaching. She taught a variety of courses in American politics, along with classes in both media and politics and women in politics. Under her mentorship many of her students went on to professional careers, including law, politics and academia. She retired from UCF in 2004.
In early 2020 Joyce and Stuart moved to a villa in the Westminster Winter Park retirement community where she met new friends and neighbors in spite of the Covid restrictions.
Memorials may be directed to Pet Rescue by Judy in Sanford, Florida and The Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida.
There will be an informal celebration of Joyce’s life on Saturday August 7th from 4:00 to 6:00 pm at the St. Richard’s Parish Hall, 5151 Lake Howell Road, Winter Park, Florida.
You are invited to sign the guest register (tribute wall).
Service
5151 Lake Howell Road, Winter Park, Florida
Our lives were blessed by her kind
and gentle spirit. We remember her
excitement over the nesting owls!
Joyce and Stuart are in our hearts forever
as the best of friends and neighbors.
Thank you, dear Joyce. We miss you.
The Tygart Valley Homestead Association of Dailey, West Virginia, extends our deepest sympathy to all of you. We are the organization who acquired the building that was formerly Homestead School, where Joyce attended school as a young girl. She was in the same class as my brother, Mark Rennix, and their class picture still hangs in the main hall. The county closed Homestead School in 2017, and we are now using the building as a community center. Joyce has sent us letters of encouragement and donations over the years. As secretary of our organization, I have sent her thank you cards, emails, and newsletters to try and keep her updated on our work and what is happening at the Homestead Community Center. We're very grateful for her support over the years, and we are saddened to hear of her death. We will miss hearing from her.
Roseann Rennix Rosier, Secretary
Tygart Valley Homestead Association
So sorry for your loss.
Lou Arasi
I will surely miss seeing you at the Enzian.
Rest easy sweet lady.
Her generosity and many kindnesses will not be forgotten. My life will not be the same without her in it. Her many friends became my friends too and that was a gift.
Like many, I hung on her words of wisdom and they ring in my head often.
I also want to acknowledge how much my late husband Steve loved Joyce. They often had heated conversations but he so admired her intellect. It was fun to watch them spar over ideology!
I hope their essences find each other in the universe. I love you Joyce. Words seem inadequate.
It was only after she left FIU for UCF, and when I was coming up for tenure, that I also learned that throughout my early years working with her, unknown to me she would write memos to be placed in my personnel file commending me on some aspect of my work, or resulting from my participation in a forum, panel, or public talk. Doing things like that, without looking for any acknowledgment or thank-yous, was just business as usual for Joyce, but personally and professionally very meaningful to me.
Beyond work, Joyce also introduced me to a community of people who blurred most of the boundaries we might usually imagine distinguishing family from friends. So, even if separated by distance, and seeing far less of her after 1985, it has been that recurrent coming together through that community which continued to reinforce her presence, and which will always prompt me to think of her with so much affection and gratitude.
Early on I saw how your quiet wisdom comforted, and when you used your professorial tone how people listened and took heed. You were my personal friend but it was obvious UCF knew what they had in you as a faculty member when they made you department chair… twice.
During the last time I spent with you you were Joyce - alert, calm, accepting and admirable. I will treasure that memory, always.
Quite simply, you mattered. Your friends and family must carry on. We promise you we will care for Stuart, as you wished.
Godspeed, my friend.
While I will dearly miss Joyce in the present, she will always be with me in my thoughts. I can only hope to approach the standards of human decency that she lived by every day. Godspeed, my dear friend.
You are one of the strongest and brightest women I have known, a woman of great compassion and a champion of female independence. I know this about you because I was a recipient of your grace (sorry Joyce, I see you roll your eyes at this, but for this example this is the correct word) in the early 2000’s. It took me much longer to understand the full extent of the small thing you asked of me at that time, but I believe it was your way of providing me a task that allowed me to show my own independent value and worth at a time I was struggling to find it. I thank you for that.
I’m fortunate to have been in the presence of your knowledge (the political insights! the Tuna stories!), your laughter (there it is), and your witty admonishments (fortunately, I'm not aware of ever being on the receiving end of these)…. You clever woman. You inspire me.
You are a part of my forever family and you are and forever will by my friend. Kiss-kiss…
I now envisioning you sitting by a campfire with other friends who have departed this physical plane, sharing tales, groaning at bad puns, and otherwise laughing it up!
Through the years she quietly listened and absorbed the overlapping conversations around her. When the moment required, Joyce spoke one sentence that offered the logical solution or explained the folly of the forming plan. No doubt I am among those still living today because we listened to her.
Memories of her are precious comfort. My world is greatly enriched by my dear friend and greatly diminished because she is gone. Gentle journey, Joyce. I love you.