Designer also harbored taste for adventure
It could have been as simple as a walk around Lake Adair, Lisa Dukes’ young son content to investigate a frog. It could have been as simple as the fulfillment of her daughter’s wish to wear a tutu outside, face painted like a clown. Dukes encouraged her children to indulge their sense of adventure, just as she did her own.
“She taught me how to live life at 100 mph, at 110 percent,” said son Ryan Dukes. “And you don’t look back and don’t apologize.”
Lisa Wall Dukes died Oct. 14, of lung cancer. She was 59.
Her children, now adults, say they distilled from their mother’s fierce loyalty a sense that, regardless of what they do, it is essential to be passionate, to give it everything. It’s the way Dukes lived her life.
“Grass was not growing beneath her feet very much,” said husband Bob Dukes. From Dukes’ various social circles and commitments, she yielded an entwined network of friends who, after she became sick, poured back much of that love she’d poured out, Bob Dukes said.
Whether it was with a parent she’d met on her children’s PTA board or her son’s Boy Scouts troop, a friend through her Bible study group or her church family, Dukes’ personality put others at ease. Whether it was with a neighbor or one of her children’s friends, Dukes possessed a sense of hospitality.
“It was a combination of the warmth of her smile, the comfort of her hug, inviting of conversation and the physical act of welcoming,” Ryan Dukes said. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she might have expressed. “Kick your feet up, enjoy this.”
With a soulful, booming laugh, “one that you could delineate from two rooms away,” her husband said, Dukes took a carefree attitude even as she devoted herself entirely to all of her obligations.
Though she moved her interior-design company, Dukes Design Group, into the home after her children were born, Dukes continued to operate it even after she became ill.
“She just had an uncanny ability to pull colors, furniture and materials together, to all feel like they were one,” her husband said. She also operated an antique booth in College Park in recent years, and had been a member of American Society of Interior Designers, her family said. Despite her love for her career though, for Dukes, it wasn’t the “end-all.”
Dukes volunteered with Freedom Ride, to blend her talent as an equestrian with a way to give back to the community. She devoted hours to her children’s school projects, asking questions along the way that encouraged them to think creatively, independently. When her children were younger, she enjoyed dressing up alongside them on Halloween.
She treasured trips to New Smyrna Beach, the Rocky and Blue Ridge mountains, and the movie “Gone with the Wind.” She was committed to her faith, teaching a Sundayschool class alongside her husband.
“She taught me that life is an adventure,” Ryan Dukes said. “It doesn’t matter where you’re going.” He adds that she also taught him: “Enjoy the blessings of the present.” In addition to her husband Bob Dukes, son Ryan Dukes and daughter Melissa Dukes, all of Orlando, Lisa Wall Dukes is survived by her mother, Thelma Wall, of Orlando; and a brother, Steven Wall, of Santa Fe, N.M.
Robert Bryant Funeral & Cremation Chapel, of Orlando, handled arrangements.