Lillian Grace Blake

Blake, Lillian Grace (aka Lee) passed away peacefully at her residence on September 13, 2018, just four hours before the date of her 72nd wedding anniversary. She was 92 years old. Lee was born in Lynn, Massachusetts on Easter Sunday, April 4, 1926, which is why her middle name was Grace. She spent her childhood and teen years growing up in Massachusetts. She loved animals and would collect a menagerie at her home. She worked in her mother's restaurant as a teenager.

Lee met her husband as a toddler because her family and his family knew each other when she was growing up. As an adult she met him again when her family moved out to California. E.W. Blake (aka Red, because he had flaming red hair) was stationed in San Diego and Lee met him while she was working for Convair, building equipment for the military during WWII. They were married on September 14, 1946 in a chapel in San Diego and remained together nearly 58 years before his death in 2004.

Lee was good with figures and during her working years she worked for various finance companies and department stores in the finance department. When she retired she worked at several self-employed jobs, raising rabbits, guinea pigs, parakeets, tropical fish, roses, selling at swap meets and making jewelry.

Her favorite pass time was playing games. She enjoyed Bingo, video poker, pinochle, hand and foot, etc. She enjoyed volunteering and spent time with the Perris Senior Center and Winchester Bingo.

Lee was generous with her time and her spirit and was the sole caregiver for a variety of people including her mother and step-father, and her husband who suffered from Alzheimer's before his passing in 2004.

In the last couple of years of her life she was diagnosed with end-stage renal failure and cancer to which she succumbed. She is survived by her daughters Patricia Lee Petersen of Washington State, Donna Jean Muise of Perris, California, three grandchildren, Timothy Daniel Petersen of Aurora, Oregon, Tammy Lee Anne Gonzalez of Vancouver, Washington, and Kevin Muise of Utah. She also has three great grandchildren, Alejandra Rae Anne Gonzalez and Cristopher Ramon Gonzalez of Vancouver, Washington, and Porter Miller of Arizona. She will be interred at Riverside National Cemetery with her husband a 22 year veteran of the Navy on September 21, 2018 at 11:01 am.