Lila Meroe Williams Aamodt, aged 83, died of pancreatic cancer on November 30, 2022. She was born August 12, 1939, in Rochester, MN, the second of five children of Marvin M. D. Williams and Orpha S. Williams.
Early life interests were music and science. Piano was her favorite instrument and her siblings remember her playing at home a lot. She was the soloist for a piano concerto during high school with the local orchestra. She also played violin and oboe. In college, she loved the challenge of learning to play the organ.
Science was a second interest as a young woman. She graduated in 1961 from Beloit College with a B.S. in biology and chemistry. In 1967 Lila earned a Ph.D. in microbiology at Yale University where she met and married Gary Aamodt in 1964. Her wedding present was a harpsichord. Gary and a friend founded A-R Editions to publish newly discovered historical musicology. Lila joined as co-owner when the company moved to Madison, WI, and was manager of its Recent Researches music series. In Madison, she played the harpsichord and recorder with a local Renaissance group, raised her two children, and was active as a leader and choir member at Luther Memorial Church where she made many lifelong friends.
She was always learning. In 1992 she and Gary moved to Eden Prairie, and Lila took an extensive two year course and became a docent for the Minneapolis Institute of Arts where she volunteered for 20 years. Later, as Lila worked through a divorce, she pursued new interests including dogsledding, cross country skiing, singing, swimming, stand up paddling and bicycling. After she moved to Kansas, she learned to play the ukulele and handbells.
In 2012 Lila moved to Mission, KS, to be near her daughter Carla’s family and explore new horizons. She volunteered at the University of Kansas hospital as a standardized patient and at Saint Luke’s Hospital as a patient visitor. She took an interest in family genealogy and learned that several relatives had been in the Civil War.
Learning her family’s history sparked an interest in the American Civil War and the history of the American West in general. She became active in the Civil War Roundtable and took part in a new living history project in Independence, MO, portraying life in 1849. She loved learning about the historical emigrant trails that started in Independence. She served leadership roles in the Trails Head Chapter of the national Oregon California Trails Association (OCTA) and in the Kansas City Area Historic Trails Association (KCAHTA) and received awards for her work.
Lila developed a love of travel that continued throughout her life. She was extremely well traveled and enjoyed trips with her husband throughout the United States, Eastern and Western Europe, Peru, Morocco, Russia, India, Kenya, and China. They learned scuba diving and especially enjoyed that sport in Bonaire She continued traveling after the divorce, and traveled to Mongolia, Costa Rica, Botswana/Zimbabwe, six US river cruises, and five national parks in Utah. More recently, she and her daughter, Carla, hiked at Rocky Mountain National Park (2019) and snowshoed at Yellowstone National Park (2022).
Lila was predeceased by a sister Martha (Charles) Stockton, a brother Kenneth (Sandy), and a son Christopher (Luoluo Hong). She is survived by Gary and their daughter, Carla Aamodt (Thomas Worth), two grandchildren, six nieces and nephews and their families; a brother Jay, a sister Hester, and two cousins.
A Memorial Service for Lila will be held on Sunday, December 11, at Immanuel Lutheran Church, 1700 Westport Road, Kansas City, MO. Visitation will be at 1PM, followed by the service at 2PM. Memorial donations may be made to OCTA (octa-trails.org) or to Immanuel Lutheran Church. Cremains will be interred at the Luther Memorial Church columbarium in Madison, WI.
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