Lillian Kanet Adams died at home in Carbondale at 5:15 AM on January 24, 2009. She was 96.
The daughter of immigrant Polish Jews, Nathan Kanet, a furrier, and his wife Lena (Lustenburg), Lillian was born in Chicago on May 10, 1912. She had two sisters, Rose and Karyl. It was the era of Teddy Roosevelt's campaign for the Bull Moose Party, 8 years before women secured the right to vote and the year of the great Titantic disaster.
Lillian recalled her suffragist mother marching for women's right to vote. That early impression of determined activism developed into a lifetime's vocation. She and her first husband, E. Leonidas Vernon, hitch-hiked throughout the American South in the late 1930s holding union meetings for tenant farmers and sharecroppers. With Socialist leader Norman Thomas they defeated martial law during a labor strike in Indiana.
But her deepest passion was the plight of women. She was a founder of the Women's Center in Carbondale, a strong member of the League of Women Voters, and a supporter of Pro Choice legislation.
Leo Vernon, with whom she had her son James Kanet Vernon Adams in 1940, had trained as a physical chemist. While Leo was pursuing a post doctorate at Harvard, Lillian began working with Planned Parenthood in Boston and the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. In Cambridge and New York they were part of a circle of radicals and Socialists that included the science fiction writers Isaac Asimov and L. Sprague de Camp.
Tragically, Leo, who had been tapped to work on the Manhattan (Atomic Bomb) Project, died suddenly. Lillian returned with her infant son to Chicago where she became reacquainted with an old friend, fellow Socialist and union organizer Edward Lawrence Adams. Ed, a widower, and Lillian were married on May 31, 1941, and they settled on a farm near Ava, Illinois. Their daughter, Jane Helen Adams, named after the Jane Addams of Hull House, was born in 1943. Ed served as a Navy Lieutenant in WWII while Lillian traveled with their children to wartime bases.
Lillian and Ed worked to defeat racial segregation in theatres, restaurants and the public schools. They put up their Ava farm as bail bond collateral for civil rights demonstrators in Cairo, Illinois. Their son Jim was one of the jailed protestors. She supported the decision by both of her children, Jim and Jane, to participate in the Freedom Summer of 1964 in violently segregated Mississippi. She and Ed were early opponents of the War in Vietnam.
Lillian was a long time member of the Unitarian Fellowship of Carbondale and a founder of the Southern Illinois ACLU. She and Ed shared a passionate love for Southern Illinois; it's flowers, birds and especially mushrooms. Fiercely independent, Lillian lived alone after Ed's death, and drove her car until she was 95. She was an inveterate writer of letters to the editor. Once, it was determined that she had published over 600. A concerned editor, suggesting that she was a frustrated editorialist, limited her to one letter every three weeks. And, like clockwork, they arrived.
A friend and backer of Senator Paul Simon, she was an early supporter of Carol Mosely Braun who was elected as the first black woman in the United States Senate. Lillian was among the first persons contacted by the Barack Obama senatorial campaign in the region. After meeting Obama she declared repeatedly that he would become President someday. This past Tuesday she rallied one last time from her declining health and asked to watch President Obama sworn into office on television. She repeatedly whispered: "astonishing, astonishing".
She is survived by her daughter Jane Adams of Carbondale, a professor at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, her son Jim Adams of Louisa, Virginia; her granddaughters Arwen Evenstar Podesta, M.D. of New Orleans and Dawn Adams Roberts of Mesa, Arizona. She was preceded in death by her sisters Rose Rothchild and Karyl Chipman; her husbands Leo Vernon in 1940 and Edward Lawrence Adams in 2001.
A memorial service is planned at the Unitarian Fellowship in Carbondale on February 8 at 2 PM. Donations in the name of Lillian Adams may be made to the Women's Center, the Carbondale Chapter of the NAACP, and the Unitarian Fellowship.
We invite you to contribute your memories by posting them as a comment at the end of this blog entry.
