Sylvia Preston

Preston, Sylvia Peter Sylvia Peter Preston died on February 16, 2011 in Charlottesville, Virginia of congestive heart failure. She was 92 years old and had been a resident of Lake Forest for almost 85 years before she moved to Charlottesville to be near her daughter last November. Sylvia was born in Highland Park, Illinois on March 23, 1918, the daughter of Marion Mason Peter and William F. Peter. She was named after her godmother, Sylvia Beach, who founded the famous Paris bookstore Shakespeare and Company and was the first publisher of James Joyce's Ulysses. The Peters moved to Lake Forest in 1926 into a James Gamble Rogers house they'd built at 990 E. Illinois Road which they named "Wilmar." Sylvia attended grammar school at the Bell School, and high school at Chatham Hall and Ferry Hall. She studied French and art history at the Sorbonne and painting at the Art Institute of Chicago. Sylvia worked at the Deepfreeze Company and in the catalog department of Montgomery Ward before her marriage to fellow Lake Forester Charles Preston in 1948. Pursuing her lifelong interests in the arts, she volunteered for many local arts organizations. She served on the board of the Chicago Public School Art Society which promoted art education in Chicago schools. She was a docent at the Art Institute of Chicago and volunteered in the decorative arts department of the Chicago Historical Society. She will be dearly remembered by her family and friends for her intellectual curiosity, original sense of humor and love for the town where she spent most of her life. She is survived by daughters and sons-in-law Margo Preston Beck of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, Marion Preston and Russell Cecil of Amsterdam, New York, and Caroline Preston and Christopher Tilghman of Charlottesville, Virginia; grandchildren Katherine Beck, Samuel Cecil, Matthew, Luke and William Tilghman; and sister Marion Peter McMahon of Wilmette. A memorial service in celebration her life will be held at the Ragdale Foundation, 1260 N. Green Bay Road in Lake Forest on Saturday, July 23 at 2:00, followed by a reception. In lieu of flowers, please send donations to Orphans of the Storm, 2200 Riverwoods Rd., Riverwoods (Deerfield), Ill. 60015. www.orphansofthestorm.org.