Willa Kay Lawall

Willa Kay Lawall (Samors) was born January 2, 1933 in Chicago. Her father Joseph Samors was a dentist, and her mother Sadie (Kaplan) was his secretary and office manager. Although an only child, Willa grew up surrounded by aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents, first on North Talman Avenue and, later, on North Kimball. She often recalled listening to radio dramas, going to the movies with her grandmother, and listening to her father’s string quartet rehearsing in the apartment. He played violin and cello; Willa studied piano.

Willa left high school early at age 15 to enter the University of Chicago. There, she earned her AB degree in 1952 and continued on to her MA (1955) and PhD (1958). As an undergraduate she studied Latin, Greek, Art History, and Russian literature, among other courses. Her edition of Thucydides is annotated on the inside cover with a meticulous outline of the entire work in Willa’s immaculate (but very small) handwriting.

As soon as she completed her MA, she set off on a Fulbright fellowship to Paris. She crossed the Atlantic on the Queen Mary, arriving in Cherbourg in late September 1955. Alongside her PhD research on the French painter François-Marius Granet, Willa made time for travel throughout Europe during her Fulbright term and in the subsequent years: hitchhiking through Spain, crossing into Switzerland and Austria, hopping the channel to England, and travelling down into Italy. In this time, she developed fluency in French and Italian and a working knowledge of German. She embraced the café culture, though too many espressos led to a lifelong, much regretted, allergy to caffeine!

In 1959, Willa was hired as a visiting lecturer at The Ohio State University’s School of Fine and Applied Arts. She was promoted to Assistant Professor in 1960 and took on the added responsibility of managing the slide library. Later that year she traveled to Mexico and was particularly struck by the beauty of Taxco’s architecture. In 1961, the department hired David Lawall, a PhD candidate at Princeton University. Willa and David married in 1963.

When David was hired by the University of Virginia in 1964, they moved to Charlottesville. Their daughter, Julia, was born in 1965, and their son, Mark, followed in 1966. In 1967, the family set off for Rome, and Willa’s mother came along to help look after the children.

The late 1960s and early 1970s were filled with David’s work to rebuild the University of Virginia’s Art Museum in the Thomas H. Bayly building, but Willa found time to help found the Charlottesville society of the Archaeological Institute of America. She was also an active supporter of the Democratic party. She worked hard on campaigns for Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern at the national level, and Henry Howell for governor of Virginia. Decades later, posters and flyers urging Virginians to “Keep the Big Boys Honest!” could be found in the attic. At one political meeting, the famed Charlottesville activist Frances Brand painted Willa with infant Mark seated on her lap; the painting is now in the collection of the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society. Indeed, on a trip to Denmark in 2008 to visit Julia and Mark, Willa arrived armed with Obama campaign stickers that she eagerly distributed far and wide.

Willa put her training in art history to work reading books on art and artists (among other topics) at Recording for the Blind. For such tasks, she had to come up with meticulous descriptions of each illustration. She was also a devoted member of the

Wednesday Music Club, helping to support young musicians across the Charlottesville area. She taught French at Tandem School and, through her work with The Learning Center, increasingly became involved with teaching reading for students struggling with dyslexia. That work gradually expanded to tutoring all sorts of subjects, even returning to Greek and Latin.

Later in life, Willa often joined Senior Center trips to museums in Washington and Richmond. She read plays with a group of friends at the Colonnades. And she took long walks, often along the Rivanna Trail with a stalwart band of fellow walkers or just around her beloved Lewis Mountain neighborhood.

Willa loved what big, cosmopolitan cities like Chicago, Paris, and Rome could offer – the museums, the music, the people. But she also loved Charlottesville with its trees, grassy lawns, and neighborhoods rich in family stories. In the last months she still took walks, slower and not so long, on the tree-lined sidewalks near her assisted living apartment. And then she would sit and rest letting the sun wash over her.

Willa was predeceased by her husband, David (d. January 23, 2025). She is survived by daughter, Julia; son, Mark and his wife Lea Stirling, and granddaughters Sophie and Maggie.