Alice Marie Lang Tilton

She is survived by her two natural children, David and Julia, and by her step children Karen Spinella, Russ Tilton, and Catherine. Alice was much loved, the middle of five children, but survived her siblings as well as many friends.

Born in rural Maryland and growing up in the Hampstead, MD area, Alice was a good student and hard worker. Though offered a college scholarship, she declined it because girls were supposed to get married and be stay at home moms. It didn’t turn out that way. She went to work for the Federal Government during a short marriage that produced two children.

Her work ethic, natural beauty, honesty, and well-spoken demeanor shepherded her through the rest of her life. She worked her way up in the clerical and secretarial fields, becoming first an executive secretary to top Air Force generals, then later to Director Positions in the Air Force Surgeon General’s office and later to the Secretary of Defense. She even spent five years living in Japan where she worked for the Commander of the Fifth Air Force. During her final years at the Pentagon, she met and later married retired Colonel William S. Tilton, a well-known artist, illustrator, and writer. Their home in Arlington VA was featured in and on the cover of an Architectural Magazine.

After her retirement, they moved to Raleigh NC where they built a home in once rural Wake County and became active members of the art community, their church, and in local causes. They supported one another and their children and their 10 grandchildren. Alice, in addition to planning, hosting, and arranging activities for Wake County Visual Arts, tutoring illiterate residents of Wake County desiring to learn to read (as adults), organizing church fundraisers, hosting visiting guest of her church, and helping others, organized a group that grew to over 30 families known as “Second Saturday.” Second Saturday grew out of the welcome wagon in her area and became a group of friends who met monthly in her home on the second Saturday of each month, with a menu topic and featured speaker. Dinner was served “potluck,” dishes were shared by the members with one another buffet style. The group met the second Saturday of each month for over twenty years and continued on at other members homes for years after.

Most of all, Alice was a sharing, caring, member of her community, a wonderful mother, leader, and productive member of the community, who passed away, outliving most of her friends and all of her core family.

She will be missed by those who knew her.

Service arrangements provided by Brown-Wynne, 300 Saint Mary's St., Raleigh, NC.