Annie Ruth Lyles' Obituary
It is with great sadness that her children and grandchildren must report that Annie’s journey on this earth has come to an end. She had been in failing health for the last year. She was surrounded by her family and went peacefully early this morning.
Annie was born on May 21, 1931, in Lauderdale County, Alabama, just outside of the town of Lexington. She was born in a farmhouse without electricity or running water. Her parents were J. Aaron Haraway and his wife Annie Lura Putnam. They were tenant farmers. Annie used to tell about 1939, “the year of the boll weevil,” when their cotton crop wasn’t enough to pay for their seed. Electric lights and running water would have to wait until she was in High School, and she never had an indoor toilet until she left home.
In 1949, she graduated from Lexington School – all 12 grades in one school. She said that she always understood that she was going to college, and she started at Florence State Teachers College (now the University of North Alabama). She was not satisfied with the education she was getting there, so her mother told her she could get a job and pay to go somewhere else.
That somewhere else was George Peabody Teacher’s College in Nashville (now a part of Vanderbilt University). To pay for school she worked for the phone company as an operator and graduated with a teaching degree in 1954. She took her college diploma home to Lexington and went to work teaching in the very same 12 grade school from which she had graduated.
As it happens, that same year, in the summer before her first teaching job, the United States Supreme Court handed down its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Believing that Lexington School would soon be integrated, one of the first assignments she ever gave was for her students (including her younger sister Myra and first cousin, Eddie Smith) to write a short biography of a black person. The only stipulation was that the biography must portray their chosen subject in a positive light.
After a year at Lexington School, she had two choices for summer fellowships. One was to go to Yale. The other was to travel to Gainesville for a summer fellowship at the University of Florida. Obviously, she didn’t go to Yale. Instead, she got on a Greyhound bus and went to Gainesville . . . after looking in an Atlas to find out where it was exactly.
At UF she saw this fellow working in the cafeteria line, and after a brief flirtation, followed by a brief romance she called her old principal and told him she wouldn’t be returning to Lexington. Instead, in a civil ceremony in Folkston, Georgia, she married Jesse Frank Lyles on August 12, 1955.
Frank still had a year to go in Engineering School. To support themselves, Annie got a teaching job at the school in Lawtey, Florida. She worked there until the following spring when Frank graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering. From there, it was o to Ft Worth, Texas where Frank had his first job, and where they welcomed their first son, Jesse Linus, in December 1956. It was there where Annie lost her mother in an auto accident while her mother was coming to see her new grandson.
Soon after, Frank grew tired of sitting in front of a drafting table. He wanted to do some real engineering. He got his chance in Melbourne, Florida, where he worked on the Eastern Test Range and the brand-new space program. He arrived in Melbourne just in time for Sputnik.
It was here that Annie would flourish, welcoming a second son, Joe, in 1959, followed by her only daughter Diana in 1962 and finally Richard in 1964. Through her membership in AAUW, she was the center of large a circle of smart, creative, professional women, like Gen Perry, Georgiana Karulf and Barbara Taylor. She wrote short stories and articles and even taught for a year at Southwest Junior High (now Palm Bay High School).
She also started traveling with Frank. In the 1960’s they travelled to Jamaica and Antigua in the Caribbean. In 1978, she went on an extended trip to France, Italy, Greece, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. In 1982, she went around the world, including a Mediterranean cruise, a stop in Thailand in 1984, and eventually Brunei on the island of Borneo where she stayed with Frank.
By 1986, she had settled down back in Gainesville, with Diana and her young son DC. There Annie went back to work at Shands hospital putting to use her experience from earlier in the 1970’s in the insurance industry. As always, she built a new circle of friends, and even sang in the choir at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Gainesville. She also enjoyed visits from her children, grandchildren, and recently, great-grandchildren. She would work at Shands for 23 years, finally retiring at the age of 89 during the Covid pandemic.
She was preceded in death by her mother (1956), her father (1975), her brother Kenneth (1994), her husband Frank (1995) and her eldest son Linus (2004). She is survived by 2 sisters, Myra Wiley (Huntsville) and Dora Harrison (Dunedin), son Joe (Linda), daughter-in-law Robin, daughter Diana, and son Richard (Judy), 6 grandchildren, Aaron (Millie), DC, Jesse, Elaine (Justin), Jessica (Ralph), and Kara (Cody). And let’s not forget the great grandchildren, Jesse, Paisley, Zoey, Harvey, and Eva.
She was one of those remarkable people no biography can do justice. Everybody who knew her loved her. We will miss her every single day.
A memorial service will be held on Saturday, September 21, 2024, at 3:30 P. M., at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 4225 NW 34th St, Gainesville, FL 32605.
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