Photo: Margaret Michniewicz 
Editor’s Note: Vermonters recently lost a dear friend and extraordinary woman, Lilian Baker Carlisle.
In the December 2004 issue of Vermont Woman, Lilian was featured in an article written by Julie Becker.
One of the most gratifying aspects of my role here at Vermont Woman is the opportunity I have to spend time talking with the Vermonters we feature in our pages, a sentiment echoed by Creative Director Jan Doerler. Jan and I will often visit with people in their homes or work environments, as we take photographs and gather visual elements about the person for presentation in the pages we share with you.
Our experience with Lilian Baker Carlisle was one we both will treasure. Lilian generously shared her time, wit, and wisdom with each of us, bringing out many of her legendary scrapbooks that are, in essence, history museums in themselves.
At the time that I first met with Lilian, she inquired as to what else would be included in that particular issue. As I started the list from the top, and mentioned that the cover would feature Northeast Kingdom belly dancer Alia Thabit, much to my surprise Lilian lit up, then sprung up - and beckoned me to another room. There, all smiles, she proceeded to bring out a number of her own garments she had begun to use – quite recently – as she learned the art of belly dancing herself. As her daughter Diana notes in the remarks that follow, Lilian had a lifelong zest for life and learning.
In the week following Lilian’s death, at a public lecture at the Shelburne Museum, Director Stephan Jost told the audience that in just the prior month Lilian met with the museum staff to assess their most recent project. As he noted, Lilian’s opinion was the benchmark of whether they had it right or not.
Lilian Baker Carlisle compelled us all to smile, while at the same time inspiring each of us to strive for excellence. It was an honor to know you, Lilian.
We share here some of the remarks from the celebration of Lilian Baker Carlisle’s Life, August 26, First Congregational Church, Burlington.
A Celebration of the Life
Lilian Matarose Baker Carlisle
January 1, 1912 - July 28, 2006
Written by her daughter L. Diana Carlisle, read by Diana’s daughter and Lilian’s eldest granddaughter, Elizabeth Schwerdtle, on behalf of Lilian’s family.
What I want to say about my mother…
Some “Thank-yous” – my mother was always big on thank-yous, so a thank-you to her community seems appropriate.
You gave her such a sense of fulfillment and accomplishment. She lived her life for you – to learn and then share with you was her purpose. You gave back to her, you heaped honor and glory and friendship on her, making her last years, particularly, a wondrous surprise – for that I thank you.
Personally: Thank you, Mom, for all these years, but especially these last ones, for sticking around long enough for me to come back to Burlington and share your life. A few years ago, before moving here, I had a painfully vivid dream – I was back, but it was too late, you were gone. It was a terrible feeling. Thank goodness I had the opportunity to be with you, to have these four years, near but still both of us independent, in our own homes. To have coffee together in the morning, sharing stories and sections of the Free Press, discussing issues of the day (not always agreeing, and you stuck to your guns – you weren’t of the “you might be right” school). I got to know your friends and YOUR Burlington. You were like a rock star – everyone wanted you at their parties and events. To sit with you in church every Sunday. You loved being up there with the young families and their children – the “balcony babies” you called them. And I found that some things never change – we were the last to leave church when I was in high school, it drove me crazy. Now? Still often the last – you had so many people to greet – that smile, that personal touch, that warmth.
My mother loved to dance – she had a natural sense of grace and rhythm. She did a terrific Charleston in her day, I saw her teach it to the cheerleaders in my class at BHS. She and Grafton had a special group of friends who met regularly to Square Dance. I can see her now, sashaying and do-si-do-ing in her circle skirt. As most of us know, she learned belly-dancing later in life, with its costumes and music and moves – for her it was what it is: the art form of a different culture. Thanks, Mom for your lifelong zest for life and learning, and your openness: to new peoples, new cultures, to keeping up with the times.
As Mother aged and life became more difficult she still had her positive attitude. She would say, when asked how she was, “Can’t see, can’t hear, can’t walk – but my head’s okay!” And it was. A wonderful upbeat attitude. So many gifts you gave me and all your family.
The final one: thank you for letting us, your daughters and granddaughters, take that last week’s journey with you, for letting us be with you in your home with its backdrop of lake and mountains, death naturally coming over you as life swirled around you. You were teaching us as death approached, as you did in life. Bravo!
Mother, Grandmother, Great-Grandmother. We love you! We celebrate you!
Remarks by Rev. Robert A. Lee,
First Congregational Church, Burlington
Did she ever throw anything away?
It’s a question I’ve often entertained when thinking about this wonderful woman. I suspect the answer was and is “No.”
Scrapbooks… Lilian loved them, didn’t she? She has a whole cupboard full at home. She knew, I think, that they are far more than just a link with our past. They are bridges to the future. Oh, maybe not your future right now, but perhaps the future which still waits for you out there in tomorrow, or for someone who will come after you. Lilian and I got to know each other fourteen years ago walking across just such a bridge.
I was newly arrived in Burlington from Wilmette, Illinois. Lilian was at home that autumn afternoon – freshly returned from having lunch with her beloved Grafton, who was then battling Alzheimer’s and confined to a nursing home. For two years she dined with him at the nursing home every day at lunch, and then often returned for dinner as well. She was a devoted and loving care giver right to the end.
We had tea in her living room overlooking the lake that afternoon. Lilian brought out a scrapbook. It was filled with photographs of her childhood home at 1303 Gregory Avenue, in Wilmette, Illinois. I was startled. Every room looked familiar – the parlor, the kitchen, the dining room. Even the side yard, filled with little girls playing in their party dresses, was familiar. “I know that house,” I said to her. “I was in it not three months ago. The woman whose home it is now is a great and wonderful pillar of that community. It’s amazing,” I said; “it hasn’t changed in all those years. Do you remember it?”
“Oh no,” Lilian said. “I was much too young when we lived there. But I’ve kept this scrapbook of my mother’s memories. Isn’t it wonderful that we can share it now and that it can become a bridge between us?”
I hope you will keep her scrapbooks well. Treasure them. Share them. Let them build new bridges for you.
There is too much about Lilian Matarose Baker Carlisle’s life for me to try and summarize here. Too many accomplishments. Too many achievements. Too many friendships and relationships. It’s a good thing, don’t you think? Imaging a life that could be summed up in five minutes! No one – least of all Lilian Carlisle – deserves that. So no, I will not try to go through her accomplishments and achievements, her positions and her papers…. but I will say this –
She was a bright and shining light – warm and welcoming, beautiful and dignified. I’d forgotten her birthplace in Meridian, Mississippi until I read the obituary. “Oh, that’s right,” I said; “she never lost that soft gentility of her southern heritage.” It radiated from her, didn’t it? But it was wonderfully mixed with the Yankee New Englander spirit – plain spoken, no nonsense, up front and bold. It would have been a serious mistake to patronize this woman, or to underestimate the astuteness of her mind.
A friend of mine once said to me that the key to 90 percent of a successful ministry can be summed up in just two words – “Show up.” It’s true in lots of fields, isn’t it? Lilian “showed up.” Arthritis, failing eyesight, diminished hearing… all of that notwithstanding, she kept showing up. There, in the balcony, every Sunday morning no matter what the weather. Out there in the community at lectures and luncheons and committee meetings. What a vital spirit carried her all her days!
Did you know that much of Lilian’s life was characterized by adversity, both at the beginning and then again in her later years? It was. That smile of hers – so stunning in its brightness – did not come from a Pollyanna view or experience of the world. Far from it! Yet she could say – and often did – such things as…
“The sun will shine again”
….or
“No matter how you feel, just put a smile on your face; one day it’ll be genuine”….
or (and this is my personal favorite)
“What’s old will be new again.”
I think there’s more than a bit of good Christian theology embedded in that.
Well the time grows short. She was a bright shining light – warm and welcoming, beautiful and dignified. Her spirit was vital, full of wonderment and hope. Pay attention, she used to say, to the “every day things that aren’t important.” Isn’t that what we all ought to be about, and to be doing more of, day in and day out, as we live our journeys upon this earth?
We have this treasure (called life) in an earthen vessel, don’t we? And whether our years are few or many, for each of us there comes not just “a time to be born but a time to die.” Lilian Baker Carlisle was blessed with a rich and full life. Her gifts to us are many, as were your gifts to her.
God gives us love; someone to love, God lends us. Let us thank God for the loan we have received of Lilian’s light, and let us, with her, pay attention not just to the “visible things” but also and especially to those which are “invisible”… the things of the spirit… for the promise of the ages is that those are the things which are ever-lasting.
