Lillian (Simpson) Longstreet

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Biography

Lillian was born in 1892. ^[1]Lillian Simpson ... She passed away in 1978.

Lillian attended Radcliff in the early 20th century.

When she was very young, her older sister accidentally dropped her from the balcony and she spent three years of her early life in traction. By age 5, she was up and meeting people. One in particular came to fame years later. Lillian's dad was a judge in Newburyport and as such, he had high visibility in the community. Edna St. Vincent Millay's mom worked during the day and felt enough trust in the Simpsons that she would leave her daughter to play with Lillian. Lillian and Edna played together outside of her home. Later, Edna's mother's new spouse, [second marriage], Edna, and her mother, moved to a better life in Maine.

At another point in her life, she had a blind date with John Marquand, a cousin of Buckminster Fuller. On the date night, he arrived very late and was covered with mud. By his account, he had taken a short cut across the marsh and had fallen in.

Lillian was in love with words. She wrote all her thoughts as poetry. As early as age five, she was well ensconced into the genre and wrote to her father from their summer home on Plum Island.^[2]

Lillian's brother Paul fought in both World Wars and did not come back from the second war. She found a way to bring the situation to light, and with wide-eyed drama, by bringing up her family history to show that the name Paul was a name that was subject to tragedy for her family. Her list of family members named Paul who suffered tragedy was extensive. Clearly she felt dearly over the loss of her brother.

While she was at Harvard (Radcliff) she sought a tutor as her math skills were not as might be expected. So challenged in fact that her tutor gave up trying to teach her and left his math exam with her on the way out. Being of sound mind, she did what she was good at and memorized the exam. Fate must have been with her that day because the exam turned out to be similar enough to the one left with her by her tutor that she ace'd the exam, but also because the two of them fell for each other and were married not long after. ^[3]

Much of her married life was spent with her husband in the city of Cleveland. Her husband worked for Warner and Swasey where he eventually retired as chief engineer. His work won him an award that was given in Paris, France and the two went on what must have been a second honeymoon.

In retirement, they moved to Bradenton, Florida where her husband famously turned lemons into lemonade or so he is remembered thusly by the author.

After her husband passed in the early sixties, she moved to Providence, Rhode Island, where she was a resident of the Minden Hotel. She had a second floor view front and located in the center to the famed Brown University. The community helped her to rediscovered her culture.

Sources

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