Remembering Barbara Tilly
Folks packed into Grace Lutheran Church on June 15 to celebrate the life of a pillar of the Wenatchee Valley community
On Saturday, June 15 folks packed into Grace Lutheran Church in Wenatchee to celebrate the life of Barbara Tilly, a pillar of the Wenatchee Valley community.
She died on May 20, at the age of 88.
She leaves behind a loving husband, children and grandchildren. She also leaves a legacy of kindness and selflessness that made an impression on anyone who knew her.
Barbara had a prodigious capacity for organization and when she got involved things got better. She served as the president of the Wenatchee Valley Symphony and was involved with the Chelan-Douglas County Republican Women, Rotary, Grace Lutheran Church, Habitat for Humanity, Packing Friendship, and the Community Foundation of NCW. She served as a Chelan County PUD Commissioner for 12 years and was active in her husband Earl’s political career as a Washington State legislator, then the state director of the Farmers Home Administration under the Regan administration, and later the Mayor of Wenatchee.
During the service, her son Bart read some of the messages folks had been sending to him and other family members with memories and messages about her.
“Your mom is in heaven, and boy is she getting that place organized!” he said, reading one message off his phone.
Yet her kindness and selflessness eclipsed her ability to organize.
Her daughter Shannon told a story from when she was a girl that illustrated that. When she was a girl Shannon said she would have a friend over frequently. Once, that friend remarked that Barbara loved her as much as she loved her own daughter. Shannon said Barbara thought about that for a minute and then agreed.
At first, she was upset at the thought of her mother loving a friend of hers as much as her own daughter. She said she later realized that her mother knew that’s what that kid probably needed to hear at that moment.
She was demonstrating how to be human.
My wife Kathryn and I met Barbara over crab Louie salads at the Tillys’ home in Wenatchee, before we joined Earl’s Rotary Club in 2013.
About a year later we worked together on a fundraiser for folks in Pateros, Washington after the devastating Carlton Complex Fire that threatened to destroy the town. They were part of a committee of volunteers who got together to raise money to help folks in Pateros get back on their feet. They wanted to put on a fundraiser at Pybus Public Market and my wife Kathryn and I were asked to help organize and publicize it.
The event was a success and we ended up raising about $65,000 dollars that could be immediately distributed in the Pateros community. Watching so many folks come through that day and talk to Barbara and Earl showcased how many people knew, loved and respected her.
One of the many lasting impacts Barbara leaves on this community is founding Packing Friendship, which our club did and still does support, and it’s one of the reasons I decided to join Rotary.
Packing Friendship is a program intended to provide food for children at risk of going hungry on weekends and during breaks.
“The program seeks to bridge the gap between the food provided by the school through the free and reduced lunch program and the student’s needs while away from school on the weekend and during vacations,” Packing Friendship’s charter reads.
Barbara would personally pack backpacks full of food and snacks, clean socks, warm hats and gloves in the winter, etc. and then work with teachers and administrators of local schools to make sure those bags got to the children who needed them most. She saw a gap in services, brought in partners, and organized an entire system to serve some of the most vulnerable people in our community.
She lived Rotary’s motto: “Service above self.”
And the fact that church was at capacity that Saturday afternoon spoke to the respect and love her community has for her.
It’s not often that you attend a celebration of life, walk out and believe that’s exactly what it was. But in this case, as we filtered out of the pews while the band played “As The Saints Go Marching In” and gathered outside for root beer floats, it didn’t feel like a somber, mournful occasion.
It was pleasant and folks seemed happy – almost as if we all knew how lucky we were to have had her in our lives, even briefly.
In the program for her celebration of life, the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi is printed twice. It’s a prayer in which one asks for many of the virtues and qualities Barbara displayed throughout her life.
“Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy,” it reads. “Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”
Barbara was also a champion for women, which her daughter Kristin spoke about during the service. I’ll never forget when my wife and I introduced her to now Chelan County Superior Court Judge Kristin Ferrera at a party.
At the time, Ferrera was running for her first election and had an opponent vying for the same seat. Barbara brightened when she learned who she was meeting and told Ferrera she had her vote.
“Us women have to stick together,” she said.
She was and is a role model. And anyone searching for an individual more worthy of emulation would be hard-pressed.
My wife and I only had the pleasure of knowing Barbara Tilly for the last decade of her life, but in those 10 years she made a lasting impact on us and I will never forget her.
Barbara was a rare thing – rarer than diamonds and rubies and pearls from the ocean depths.
She was a Christian.
For those who want to give a memorial in Barbara’s name, the Tilly family asks folks to support either the Packing Friendship Program or as seed money to help start the Grace Lutheran Church Youth Music Outreach Ministry. The address for both is 1408 Washington Street, Wenatchee, Wa. 98801. Please indicate the gift is in memory of Barbara Tilly.
Barbara Tilly was a a lovely person: kind, friendly, community minded, generous, with a talent for bringing out the best in people. She will be very much missed by so many.
She was a lovely lady. She was my pep club advisor in high school when she was only about eleven or twelve years older than the kids. In more recent years I encountered her again in connection with Packing Friendship. I'm glad you wrote about Barbara Tilly.