Lucille Esther Christie

Lucille Esther Christie was born in Wilson County, Floresville, Texas. She was born to Mary Lovinia Crowell and Lewis Henderson Miller from Concord, North Carolina on September 8, 1913. She had two sisters, Pauline Brown and Vivian Heye. She is survived by her brother, Leroy Miller and his wife, Lorraine, of Hondo, Texas, and many nieces and nephews in Texas: Mary, Joseph, Vivian, Lewis, Michael, James and Helen Heye, and Sherline Fox and Claire Hindes. Nieces and nephews of her husband's family in Minnesota are: Joan Conzemius, Kathryn Gerlach, John & William Schottler, Joyce Smith and Anne Rooney. Lucille never had children, but her children were counted by the numerous nieces and nephews she so fondly played with as children and kept in close touch with as adults over many years.

Lucille often reminisced about her childhood growing up on the farm during good times and bad times. Initially the family lived near Stockdale and visited Sutherland Springs for picnics each year. Then the family moved to a farm near Jourdanton. Lucille had clear and precise memories of family events, such as the first purchase of the Pierce Arrow car, of riding horses and mules to school, and her father being on the Jourdanton School Board. She began a legacy of maintaining the family history which she continued all her life and which led to her career in historical research and preservation. She often shared these memories in a rich national historical context with anyone willing to listen.

She moved to San Antonio to go to secretarial school during The Great Depression. She worked for Southern Casket Company in San Antonio. She married Thomas W. Christie on December 26, 1936 at St. Gerard's Catholic Church in San Antonio. She traveled with her husband in the Army Air Corps to more than 30 countries during and after World War II, including a four-year tour in occupied Germany during the Berlin Airlift. Tiring of the nomadic life as a military wife, she longed for a home to plant roots. Her husband smiled and said, "you'll just have to keep your roots in a flower pot." She took his advice, looked ahead to the future and began accumulating skills at every posting. Working on flight line during the Berlin Airlift, she administered a unit that maintained C-54 Transports. In the early 1950's, as a Washington D.C. intelligence analyst, she polished a talent to sift mountains of data, including UFO sightings. After her husband's retirement and unexpected death in 1955, she made California and Santa Barbara County her home.

In 1962 she moved to Vandenberg Village and re-established her civil service career by working in national defense in the Judge Advocate's office at the newly established Vandenberg AFB. Over the years she continued an avid devotion to recording and cataloguing personal, local and national events.

Her dedication to historical preservation was evidenced by her many positions as director and trustee for historical foundations. She served as librarian for Santa Barbara Research Foundation, charter member and author of the La Purisima Mission Docent Program, commissioner on the Santa Barbara County Historic Landmark Advisory Commission, Trustee of the Western Spaceport Museum, Director of the Lompoc Museum, and director on the Lompoc Valley Historical Society. She also prized her membership in the Daughters of the American Republic DAR and the Westerners, a prestigious historians' association. Lucille was known for her fast short-hand, and she was a gifted seamstress. In addition to her civil service and secretarial careers, she served several years as a medical assistant and a teacher for medical terminology at local community colleges. She remodeled a garden home in Vandenberg Village which she called her "Yellow Cottage" and maintained at least 50 rose bushes surrounding the cottage. Many of rosebushes had yellow roses, but a wide variety of colors and bushes graced the front and side yards.

In 2002, Lucille moved back to Texas to be close to her family. She lived at Brighton Garden's Assisted Living and enjoyed dressing elegantly and wearing a matching hat everyday. She was known as the "Hat Lady."

Funeral services will be held at St. Augustine's Catholic Church in Austin, MN. She will be buried in Catholic Calvary Cemetery next to her beloved husband.

After her work as director of the Lompoc Museum was finished, she worked in the Lompoc Public Library documenting obituaries to help other researchers. She said, "When our Lompoc pioneers died, their whole life was printed—how they came west in wagon trains, how they found their way to Lompoc Valley." "I'm doing it research for future generations," she explained. "Unless someone makes the effort, we may lose our links with the past." Lucille Christie did more than her share. Now she hopes another generation will carry on her work.