Lillie Terry Spirakis

Lillie Winston Terry Spirakis , known to her friends as Terry, a native of Tennessee who made Pensacola her home for nearly seventy-five years, passed away on Thursday, December 5 at the Haven of Our Lady of Peace long-term care facility in Pensacola, after a brief illness. She was 100 years of age. She was preceded in death by her husband, Joseph W. Spirakis, Sr., proprietor of the former Sportland Newsstand in downtown Pensacola.

The youngest of three daughters born to Albert Gallatin Terry and Lillie May Nowlin Terry, Terry Spirakis graduated from Medina High School in Medina, Tennessee, and attended Austin Peay Normal School (now Austin Peay State University). Her sisters, Alba May Keeton and Maureen Elizabeth White, predeceased her.

Terry and her husband, Joe, whom she met at Austin Peay, married in 1943 while Joe was in the Army. Upon his discharge at the end of World War II, they moved to Pensacola where they operated Sportland Newsstand for more than thirty-five years. In addition to raising four children, Terry served as the pastor's secretary for 25 years at East Hill Baptist Church, where she also taught Sunday school. After their retirement and Joe's passing in 1984, Terry returned to work as a church secretary at Immanuel Lutheran Church for several years, volunteered at Baptist Hospital, and served as a docent at Dorr House in the Pensacola Historic District.

Terry is survived by three daughters, Patsy Spirakis, Alice Spirakis (Jim Logue), and Lillie Maureen Spirakis (Paul Ernde); a son, Joseph W. Spirakis, Jr. (Sonja); her grandchildren, Nikki Spirakis (Eric Hajek), Joseph W. “Jay” Spirakis, III (Kamille), Chris Gravat, Terry Logue (Betsy), and Lillie Buchanan; and her great-grandchildren Valerie, Joel, and Ben Spirakis; Natalie Payne; James and Olivia Logue; and Lillie Grace Buchanan.

Terry Spirakis was a loving, kind, hard-working, helpful, and joyful Christian who lived out the meaning of her faith to the very end of her life and bore the limitations and indignities of aging with incredible grace.