one of its most loyal friends when Elizabeth Stillman died on June 5, 2011 at Central Texas Medical Center in San Marcos after a short illness.
Known to her friends as Stilly, she was preceded in death by her parents, Frank and Emily Stillman. She is survived by her best friend Betty Wright and the rest of us who counted her as a friend, and there are many.
Stilly was born on September 21, 1929 in St. Johnsville, New York. The youngest of three sisters, she and her sisters were placed in The New York City Foundling Home when Stilly was two. After a year in the home, she and her oldest sister were adopted by the Stillmans and lived in New Jersey for several years before her father relocated the family to Florida.
When Stilly was in sixth grade, her Mother, a Quaker turned Episcopalian, heard Stilly’s teacher commit a grammatical error and pulled her daughter from the public school, enrolling her in Mont Verde Private School until she reached high school when she attended Montreat in North Carolina.
After high school, Stilly attended Alabama State College for Women in Montevallo, Alabama, where she first met Betty Wright, studied health and physical education and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in 1951. While the school was strict – no cars or riding in cars, dresses worn at dinner, a formal dinner every month – it gave the girls free roam of the campus and a student voice in matters of conduct and policy.
Stilly went on to teach junior high science in Mobile, Alabama before receiving a Master in Health Education from Peabody University in Nashville, Tennessee in the mid-1950s. She arrived in San Marcos, Texas in 1956 to teach physical education, health and kinesiology at Southwest Texas State University, where she also coached tennis and golf and introduced track and field for women, holding the first female track meets at the university.
Stilly moved to Wimberley in 1967 in the Eagle Rock section of what is now Wood Creek. That same year, she also bought a building on the square that she turned into the Wimberley Galleries (now The Old Mill Store), run by her friend the artist Mickey Thurmond and his wife, Lou.
It was at the Gallery that Stilly and Betty took up picture framing, turning a craft into an art form and continuing that business in their own home after they sold the Gallery.
A member of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in San Marcos, Stilly joined with some of its Wimberley parishioners to start an Episcopal church in Wimberley, becoming one of the founding members and staunchest supporters of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Wimberley.
The original congregation met in a bunkhouse on the Brinsmade Ranch, with the children sitting on the bunks, the adults at the kitchen table and the sacrament on the hot water heater. By 1973, the church had built the original chapel, with Stilly serving as one of the first vestry members. She continued her support of St. Stephen’s throughout her lifetime, helping to build the fellowship hall and attending services in the mission-style chapel she had helped create.
After Stilly retired, she was free to spend her time as she wished. She played many a game of golf and joined a tennis club in Austin, swinging her racket in tournaments throughout Central Texas in the 50-plus age bracket. In the ‘90s, she participated in the Senior Olympics, bringing home the gold, the silver and the bronze .
An avid lover of animals, she traveled extensively to Africa, taking six safaris.
Stilly’s view on life was that the environment needed to be protected, the hungry needed to be fed and the children needed to be cared for.
As she did with so many of her passions, Stilly translated her love of animals and the environment through the support of WAG (Wimberley Adoption Group), the Wimberley Valley Watershed Association and numerous wildlife rescue organizations throughout the world.
An avid believer in the importance of education, she quietly helped many young people in the area, some of them her students, to pursue and complete their educations.
As an active member of the Wimberley community, Stilly supported the Wimberley Institute of Cultures and the Wimberley Players. She was a founding member of the WimDems, holding the first Wimberley meeting at her house many years ago, with 23 Democrats in attendance.
She lived her life the way she wanted, reaching out with an unstinting and unpretentious generosity to her friends and her community. She spoke the truth when needed and loved the world in such a way that it had no choice but to love her back.
Stilly was remembered at a service on Saturday, June 11, 2011 at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Wimberley, TX. Funeral arrangements were handled by Pennington’s Funeral Home in San Marcos. People wishing to make donations to Stilly’s ongoing contributions may mail them to WAG, P.O. Box 2603, Wimberley, TX 78676, or St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, 6000A FM 3237, Wimberley, TX 78676.
So onward, Stilly. She told us not to cry. She did what she came here to do. And some of us believe that she is sitting in the great hereafter, drinking a scotch and laughing with friends, poking the non-believers in the ribs and saying – “I told you so!”
