Lasting Memories
Lucy McNeely Tyler
May 13, 1920-March 14, 2012
Mountain View, California
Submitted by Steven Tyler
Lucy McNeely Tyler passed away peacefully on March 14th, 2012, at a health care facility in Sunnyvale, due to declining health and following a short illness after a stroke. She was 91.
Lucy was born in Clarendon, VA, on May 13th, 1920. She attended public grade school in Arlington, VA, McKinley High School in Washington, DC, and Meredith College in Raleigh, NC. After marrying her husband, James Kenneth Tyler in 1941, they lived in Washington, DC, Sunbury, PA and Philadelphia, PA, before moving to Mountain View in 1964. In addition to being a wife, homemaker and mother, Lucy was always very active in her community. She served as president of the League of Women Voters of the Los Altos-Mountain View area from 1968-1970 and again in 1985-1986. After having breast cancer in 1976, she became active in the Reach to Recovery Program of the American Cancer Society, where she was Visitor Training Coordinator for four years. She also worked for Midpeninsula Citizens for Fair Housing and for the American Red Cross.
She began writing poetry in the late 1970s and was a longtime member of the Waverley Writers poetry group in Palo Alto. In August 1981, at the age of 61, Lucy earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English from San Jose State University. Since the 1990s she had been active in the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto, singing in the choir and serving as music coordinator as long as her health permitted.
She was preceded in death by her husband, Kenneth, and two sisters, Lala and Sue. She is survived by her sons, Steven K. Tyler of Mountain View and J. Alan Tyler of Reno, NV, two grandchildren, Allison and Brian Tyler, and several nieces and nephews.
March 24, 2012
I too knew Lucy through working together on the Waverley Writers Steering Committee. I remember her gentle voice with its lilting Virginia accent, and her zany sense of humor. She used to clip oddball news stories and make poems from them. Going through old copies of FRESH HOT BREAD, the Waverley Writers literary journal, I found, among her many more serious poems, one titled ?Be Careful What You Wish For.? It comments on a report in the London Times that astronomers have discovered a cloud containing enough alcohol to make an estimated 400 trillion trillion pints of beer. Lucy imagines 40 days of beer rain: ??reservoirs are overflowing and bleary-eyed housewives in floppy bedroom slippers complain about having to wash clothes with beer water. Even the cows give beer milk.?
March 22, 2012
Lucy was a dear friend and fellow poet whom I knew through Waverley Writers. We served together on the Waverley Steering Committee, where she acted as chair and held the meetings at her home for several years. She guided us with a gentle hand and always had an encouraging word for me and my poetry.