Lucille Colimore, nurse, family matriarch
Lucille W. Colimore, a family matriarch and retired registered nurse, died Saturday at Gilchrist Hospice Care in Towson. She was 97 and had lived in Lutherville for many years.
Born in Crewe, Va., she was the daughter of William Edward Williams, a Norfolk and Western Railroad conductor, and his wife, Florence Lee Davis.
“From her house — where she was born in 1921 — she could hear train whistles and chugging steam engines pulling a long line of coal cars,” said her son, Edward Brian Colimore of Lumberton, N.J. “She and the family often entertained themselves playing the piano, guitar and ukulele.”
After graduating from a local high school, Mrs. Colimore left Crewe for the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and began training as a nurse. She also lived for a time in Richmond, Va. and nursed at St. Elizabeth's Hospital.
While in Baltimore she met her future husband, James A. Colimore, on a blind date in 1941. They married in 1942.
She and her husband lived in the Northwood community until 1968, when they moved to Lutherville.
“My mother ended up using her nursing skills on the family,” said her son. “She stayed up late typing school term papers for her children too.”
Mrs. Colimore was the center and heart of her family. The family home became a place for birthdays, graduations, Thanksgiving and Christmas.
“She was a good cook,” said another son, James A. Colimore Jr. of Lutherville. “She combined her Southern cooking with the Italian cuisine she learned from my father’s side of the family.”
A life celebration will be held at 11:30 a.m. today at Valley Baptist Church, 1401 York Road in Lutherville, where she had been a member and belonged to the Heritage Club. She helped arrange church trips, read the Bible and enjoyed Christian music.
In addition to her sons, survivors include a daughter, Karen Lee Colimore Childs of Rodgers Forge; a sister, Cornelia Kathleen Barron of Dublin, Ohio; eight grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren. Her husband of 54 years, a News American nightclub writer who was also an owner of the old One West Restaurant and Chanticleer, died in 1996.