B. Jill Perrott

Barbara Jill Perrott was born in the town of Newburgh, New York on July 14, 1943. She was known to all as JIll. She died after a long decline from a progressive, but non-cancerous, lung disease at age 83 in her home in Alexandria, Virginia on July 27, 2026.

She was the first of four daughters born to Barbara Dennis Perrott and John Perrott II. (John was serving in the U.S. Navy aboard a destroyer escorting convoys of Liberty Ships across the North Atlantic). She grew up on the west bank of the Hudson River and had a rich family life in a neighborhood where grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins all lived within walking distance.

After Jill, the family grew to include sisters Jennifer, Lynn, and Laurie. She went to Balmville Elementary School, North Junior High School, and Newburgh Free Academy where she graduated as valedictorian. She enrolled in St Lawrence University in Canton, New York, earning a B.A. degree in 1965.. She attended Katharine Gibbs School for Secretaries in New York City, and then worked as an executive secretary for several companies in Manhattan and shared an apartment with her sister Jennifer in Brooklyn.

Her sister Jennifer married and moved to Arlington, Virginia in the early 1970s. Jill followed a few years later to be near her sister and family. She was always an attentive aunt to her two nephews Owen and Jesse Emry and enjoyed watching them grow up.

After moving to Arlington, she worked at several different agencies and institutions in D.C,, among them the National Academy of Sciences and the International Monetary Fund. She retired in the late 2000s.

Jill loved traveling. Her work at the IMF took her to countries across the world, including China, Republic of Georgia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, the Baltics, New Zealand. She often used her vacation days to extend these work trips to have more time to explore the cities and countries where her work took her.. She loved horses and riding and many of her vacations were for extended horseback tours in far-flung parts of the world, including Wyoming, Inner Mongolia, Northern Xinjiang province of China. One of her most memorable adventures was a bus tour down the Karakoram Highway from Kashgar in the Tarim Basin of western China over the Himalayas to Islamabad, Pakistan.

Jill never married. She was preceded in death by her parents and her two youngest sisters, Laurie and Lynn. She is survived by her sister Jennifer Emry, two nephews (Owen and Jesse Emry), two nieces (Lynn’s daughters Noor Martin and Alanna Carlin), and five grand nieces and nephews.

A talented photographer, Jill took photos of family, flowers, animals, nature, and cloud formations. She documented all her travels with albums of people and places. Music was important in her life. Her taste was eclectic: World Music, Beatles, Classical, Rock and Roll, Opera, Bluegrass, and on and on…

Jill was long committed to protecting animals and our planet Earth. She grew up with pets: dogs, cats, birds, horses. She contributed to the charity Egypt Equine Aid, and did volunteer promotional work for them. She contributed to The Sierra Club and to Nature Conservancy. Instead of cards or flowers, consider contributing in her name to these charities:

EgyptEquineAid.org

SierraClub.org

Nature.org

No funeral is planned, but a celebration-of-life memorial service may be arranged in future. For more information about this, or any other questions, please contact Jennifer (Perrott) Emry at [email protected].