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She
Was the Town’s “Lily of the Valley”
Lily Warren
PHOTO COURTESY OF TOWN OF DEDHAM
Lily Warren was still living when Dedham named a road in her
honor. |
Everybody in town
remembers Lily Warren—if not for the donuts she baked every weekend,
then for her storytelling.
“She knew a lot of
people, and she could tell stories,” said Dedham native Phillip
Johnson. “She was an institution. She kept busy in town affairs for
a long time.”
Warren, who passed
away last year, was one of Dedham’s most colorful characters.
“My father always
called her Lily of the Valley, because she lived in a valley, sort
of,” said Thelma Hamilton, a Dedham resident who was especially
close to Warren. “She was special.”
After she died of
pneumonia on March 20, 2001, the Dedham Congregational Church could
not seat everyone who came to her memorial service.
Dedham’s older
residents appreciated her for her lifelong pride in her Finnish
heritage. The younger ones knew her for volunteering to read to the
kindergarten class at the Dedham school on Community Reading Day.
And nearly all
residents knew her through her work behind the counter at the town
office.
She worked for the
town for more than 50 years in various elected and appointed
capacities. She was at various times its clerk, treasurer, tax
collector, office secretary and office manager.
“If I ever needed
to know anything,” Hamilton said, “I’d just phone Lily.”
Lily Warren was a
dedicated worker, hardly ever out of the office. She was healthy
right up until the day she went to the hospital for pneumonia.
Dedham has not yet
finished its conversion to the E-911 system, but at least the roads
were renamed before Warren died.
One of them: Lily
Road. |
