Lillian Ross, a resident of North Sea for 40 years, died August 19 of congestive heart failure in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She was 100.
Born in 1912 in Odessa, Russia, where her father was an engineer and her mother directed the Children’s Opera Theatre, she taught reading at Southampton College and privately until she retired. Hundreds of her students learned to love the printed word in her company, her survivors said.
Her father worked for John Deere, which brought them to Minnesota, where Ms. Ross attended the University of Minnesota, earning a Bachelor of Science degree. She later earned a master’s degree in education from Teachers College of Columbia University.
After graduation from college, she married Philip H. Dunaway and the couple soon moved to Washington D.C. There she taught high school until moving to New York City after the war, and had a child, David. Starting in the 1940s, she taught dance, drama, and reading, including team-teaching with Pete Seeger at the Downtown Community School. Her motto was: “Never A Dull Student.”
She and her second husband, Robert R. Ross, a Southampton attorney, bought a house in North Sea. After winters proved challenging, they moved to Sarasota, Florida, until the death of Mr. Ross in the fall of 2012, after which she moved in with her son and daughter-in-law in New Mexico.
She is survived by her son, daughter-in-law, three stepsons and their families; and three grandchildren.
on Sep 12, 2013