Lillian DeBolt

Lillian May Shiley DeBolt, age 97, died December 19, 2014, at her home in Barrington. She was born May 25, 1917, the same year as Jack Kennedy, Dean Martin, and Ella Fitzgerald, the latter of whom sang Lil’s favorite song, “A-Tisket, A-Tasket, I Lost my Yellow Basket.”

Lillian was born in Palatine to Charles Fulton Shiley and Lidia Mary Decker Shiley, when the major roads were gravel, and the locations of today’s businesses were rolling farmland. Her father was a sharecropper in northern Illinois who rented land from Dundee to Barrington. On one of the farms he rented, Lillian and her siblings used to climb the windmill overlooking the land, swing from the barn rafters and play in the haymow. That building remains standing today as the former Barn of Barrington restaurant.

As an early 20-something, she worked at McLeister’s soda fountain, located where the Bread Basket Restaurant is currently situated. In the backyard bordering her parents’ home, a strapping young lad by the name of Jim DeBolt often worked on his car and would take shortcuts across her lawn on the way home from work to ensure they met frequently. The repeated mutual flirting paid off, and on June 15, 1940 they wed in the Barrington United Methodist Church. Sixty years later their generosity contributed to rebuilding that church in its new location after a devastating fire.

When her husband purchased the then Sinclair gas station on the northwest corner of Routes 14 and 59 in 1948, she had the full time job of raising eight rambunctious children while doing the bookkeeping and tire deliveries for the business. The entire bunch often spontaneously piled into the family car and enjoyed extended road trips to the American West, and it fell to Lillian to ride herd on the growing family.

Lillian had a close relationship with Nature, and her green thumb was renowned. The vast collection of beautiful, repeatedly flowering cacti in her home were infamous for the unanticipated pinpricks endured by her children and ultimately her grandchildren. In 1965 when Jim established DeBolt Tire Company, the flower gardens she tended in their yard on west Main Street were admired by many citizens of the Village of Barrington.

She also spent many hours every summer picking wild black raspberries. In her 80s she slipped while climbing a fence to get to a berry patch, tearing her rotator cuff, and against the advice of several doctors who felt her age was a risk for surgery, she elected to have her shoulder surgically repaired. Her strict adherence to the post-operative physical therapy had her back climbing fences the next berry season. Those hard-earned berries and many other fruits found their way into her sizable repertoire of homemade jellies and jams which were a favorite staple when her grandchildren were college-bound.

Lillian’s creativity both in and out of the kitchen was prodigious. Her homebrewed mint iced tea and Christmas-time chewy noels induced well-worn paths from the front door to the refrigerator and cookie jar by friends and family alike. Over the years she handmade rugs, quilts and countless cross-stitch projects for her children and grandchildren. In her later years she hand-painted piggy banks for her great-grandchildren as well.

In 2014 she celebrated ninety-seven years of age, and was surrounded by a multitude of close relatives recently when she attended a family Oktoberfest, as well as Thanksgiving dinner.

She is survived by her younger sister, Lidia (Johnson), St. Michael, MN; two sisters-in-law, Mary Shiley, Milwaukee, WI, and Helen Shiley, Elmhurst, IL; all eight of her children, Sylvia (Donaldson), Madison, WI, Carol (Dalitsch), Barrington, Mary (Sherman), Wauconda, IL, Jane (Dawson), Cary, IL, Linda, Fox Lake, IL, Jim, Elgin, IL, Martha (Stephens), Princeton, IL and Marjie (Sandstol), Round Lake Beach, IL; ten grandchildren; and twelve great-grandchildren. She is further survived by nieces, nephews, other relatives and many friends. In addition to her parents and husband of sixty-six years, James Henry DeBolt IV, she was preceded in death by brothers Clifford, Charles, Edwin and Harold, sister Florence, and granddaughter Heather Bryant and grandson Matthew Stephens.

Memorial service will be held at 11a.m., Saturday, January 3, 2015, at Barrington United Methodist Church, 98 Algonquin Road, Barrington, IL 60010.

Burial will be held privately at Evergreen Cemetery.

In lieu of flowers memorial may be made directly to Barrington United Methodist Church, 847-836-5540.

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