Aunt Lillian

Lillian Hilda Repschleger Hudson

03Jun1915 - 17Apr1989

Aunt Lillian was my mom's oldest sister and the second born child of my Granny and Paw, William and Christine Repschleger. Granny's first born was a boy who died at childbirth at the hands of an incompetent doctor who tried to delay the baby's delivery and lost him in the process. It was three years after that tragic experience that Granny and Paw had Aunt Lillian. Granny said that she and Paw carried baby Lillian around on a pillow, treating her life a fragile little flower. What a bittersweet story this is - young parents still traumatized by their first-born experience and trying so hard to protect this new little baby from harm.

My mom said that Aunt Lillian was her mother's favorite, but I'm not sure that was true. I could tell how much Granny loved my mother, my Aunt Helen and Uncle Bill. But Aunt Lillian was indeed very much the oldest sister.

I don't know much about her as a child, except that she played the viola that I now have on the bookshelf in my office. She was part of the Repschleger family band that included my Granny on piano, Paw on Cello, Lillian on Viola and Helen on her little violin. How amazing is that! There are so many things about that story I want to know - who had this idea, how did they acquire those instruments, who taught them to play, and what did they play?

My mom said that Aunt Lillian was popular and very grown up as a teenager - taking the car on pretend trips to the library when she visited friends and smoked cigarettes. I understood those stories, for she was five years older than Mother - just like my sister Jeanne was five years older than me. And she was beautiful and sophisticated, just like Jeanne.

Aunt Lillian attended Stephen's College in Missouri, the second-oldest women's college in the country. After Stephen's, she transferred to the University of Texas in Austin where she studied interior decorating but did not complete her education. She married and then divorced Tim O'Halloran - scandalous for the family at the time because Tim was Catholic and the marriage ended in divorce. She later married Clair Hudson, well-known in the Port Arthur area for his tennis playing. She and Uncle Clair remained childless throughout their marriage, but made their home comfortable for their nieces and nephews. I loved them and looked forward to spending the night, stopping by on my walk or bike ride home from Tyrrell Elementary School and having them at our house.

I think of Aunt Lillian as refined. She was one of the few women I knew who worked outside the home in a business. For years she worked at a Savings & Loan in Port Arthur. She always dressed for work in tailored business clothes and looked very professional. Her nails were were always manicured - long, carefully filed, and painted a deep red, like her lipstick. When I stopped by there to see her, it was obvious that she was all business at work. She was still my Aunt Lillian, but certainly signaled that this was not the time and place for our usual aunt/niece conversations.

I remember Aunt Lillian talking about Jeanne's "swan-like neck" and my fingers, that she imagined would be long and tapering. Her nails were always long and manicured, with a deep red polish. These were physical traits that suggested to me that Jeanne and I were also destined to be refined ladies.

Aunt Lillian enjoyed and was good at flower arranging and decorating. I remember her instructing me on the three levels of flower arranging - heaven, man and earth - and seeing the artful, Japanese style arrangements she constructed. She was my mother's go-to person on interior design consultation, and helped my mom transform old furniture into a beautiful aqua themed bedroom for me when our family moved to Houston when I was in the fourth grade. Her own home was painted sea-foam green throughout and had Asian inspired accessories.

Some of my most enjoyable times with Aunt Lillian involved coin collecting. When she worked at the Savings & Loan, she would bring rolls of coins home every night and go through them while watching television with Uncle Clair. She and I sat together on her living room sofa with coins, coin books, magnifying glasses, and little coin envelopes, searching for coins to fill up our books and celebrating together when we found a rare one. An evening tradition involved stopping our coin work for a Hershey bar and a Coke - very much a nightly ritual for her and Uncle Clair.

We fondly called Aunt Lillian "Crazy Aunt Lillian" because she was fun to be with. She told stories that often strayed a bit from the truth, becoming more colorful from her knack for exaggerating or "embroidering" her stories to make them more interesting. In the years after I married and moved to Memphis, I understand that "crazy" took a new meaning and she struggled with mental illness. I have heard stories of these troubled years that are sad and hard to believe, as I did not witness this Aunt Lillian. After her parents died and Uncle Clair retired, Aunt Lillian and Uncle Clair moved to Atlanta, TX - closer to Uncle Clair's remaining family and the land that they purchased as an investment. It was then that I lost touch, and I am sorry that I did not have the chance to tell her how much she enriched my life, and how thankful I am to have known her. Isn't that the case with so many people we love?