The Register-Herald, Beckley, West Virginia

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    Lilly
August 5, 2009

Lilly Reunion

British woman to attend Lilly reunion

By Courtney D. Clark

Susan Lilly Kerry grew up believing her father died in World War II, soon after she was born.

It was not until age 17 that Kerry learned her father, the Rev. Roscoe Lilly, was very much alive and living in West Virginia.

“My dad was a GI stationed in Leicestershire when he met my mother, and I was the result,” Kerry said. “I was born in March and my father went back to America in July of 1945 when the war was over. For some unknown reason, my mother told me that he never made it out of the war.”

Nearly at the age of adulthood, Kerry decided to go rummaging through her grandmother’s old chest of drawers.

“My grandma died when I was only 10 years old, and I had never touched her things, but that day I did,” she said. “In that drawer, I found a letter my father wrote to my mother many years before. I wrote to the address, in a, ‘Dear Dad, I am your daughter, 911,’ sort of way, and he responded. Perhaps my grandma left the letter there for a reason. I guess you never know.”

Kerry did not only gain a father that day, she inherited 10 siblings.

Her father wrote to Kerry until he died in 2001, but her half-sister, Bertha, continued the correspondence.

“Dad told me about the letter that very day,” Bertha Lilly Hylton, of Daniels, said. “He said he asked Sue’s mother to join him in America, but that she was afraid to travel with Sue by ship because it was such a long trip at the time. She chose to tell her that dad was killed in the war, so we didn’t know about each other until 1961. We corresponded through letters, pictures and phone calls for 46 years before Sue came to America for the first time in 2008.”

“We look a lot alike,” Kerry said. “It’s like we’ve known each other from the very beginning. I just really regret that I never got to meet my dad. I hadn’t even been to the United States until last year. I was widowed with three children and never had the money to come over.”

But there is no better time than the present, especially when Kerry’s second visit to America will introduce her to nearly each and every one of her immediate and extended family members, at this weekend’s 80th annual Lilly Family Reunion.

Kerry said she wanted to come to the reunion, so Hylton met her and a friend in Charleston when her plane touched down Tuesday evening. After a long journey from her current home in Barlestone, England, Kerry has been resting up for the three-day event that begins Friday.

“I’ve been going to the reunion now for six years,” Hylton said. “We see this as a sad story with a very happy ending, and I can’t wait for her to meet the rest of the family. It is going to be great. I’m just so glad she’s here.”

“I feel so terribly bad that Dad never had the chance to meet Sue, so we are going to make sure to fill her in. She has us now.”

— E-mail: cclark@register-herald.com

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