Roxie Lou Railsback

1926 - 2020

Roxie Lou (Hill) Railsback 01/26/1926 - 03/24/2020 Roxie Lou (Hill) Railsback, a 62-year resident of Torrance, passed away on Tuesday, March 23, 2020, at Torrance Memorial Hospital. Born and raised in Pawhuska, OK until her senior year of high school when her family moved during WW2 to Pueblo CO, Roxie was 94 when she died. Roxie worked at the Telephone Company switchboard in Pueblo during her college years at Pueblo Jr. College and later transferred to Colorado State College of Education (now the University of Northern Colorado) where she majored in Social Studies Education. During her senior year of college when the soldiers all returned from the war, she met a handsome young Air Force veteran named Merl. They were married at the end of that school year on August 14, 1947, at the Court House in St. Francis, KS, after dropping a load of wheat off at the grain elevator. Roxie was a lifetime member of a Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) congregation, and was active at the South Bay congregation in Redondo Beach until it closed. She was active in the Christian Women's Fellowship and taught adult Sunday school classes. The family was also active in the Torrance YMCA where she was a director's assistant at summer camp and active in her daughter's Indian Maidens groups. Roxie was an elementary or high school teacher in their eight years of teaching in rural Colorado: Kirk, CO (1950-1952); Grover, CO (1952-1956), and Flagler, CO (1956-1958). In 1958 Roxie, Merl and their four-year old son Gary moved from Flagler, a small rural town in Eastern Colorado of about 700 where she was a teacher and he was Superintendent, to Torrance, a town of about 90,000 that year. Roxie stayed home for a few years as the family welcomed daughter Donna in 1959. In 1963, she went back to work as a substitute teacher for Los Angeles Unified School District. In 1968 she returned to full-time at Bonita Street Elementary in Carson where she taught until 1986 when both she and Merl retired. She is survived by her two children: daughter, Donna Braly (Torrance); son, Gary Railsback (Newberg, OR); grandchildren are Lyle Railsback (New York City, NY); Eric Railsback (Sausalito, CA); Emily Railsback (Chicago, IL); Leah Braly, (Torrance); Elisa Devorkin (Colorado Springs, CO) and five great grandchildren, Jesse, Kian, and Wynter of Torrance; Roxie of Colorado Springs, and Chloe Roxana of Chicago, born the day after Roxie passed. She was preceded in death by her husband, parents and three siblings. A private family burial service was held at Pacific Crest Cemetery, Redondo Beach on Thursday, April 2. A gathering of family & friends will be held after the Coronavirus stay at home policy has expired. Roxie will be remembered by family, friends and teacher colleagues as having a great sense of humor, exuberant laughter with a smile that accentuated her dimples, and numerous stories that recounted everyday experiences that most would forget but that she carried on and were numbered into the hundreds. In 1947 her first principal in Colorado told her she should be on television because of her sense of humor, and she enjoyed pulling pranks with colleagues at her school. She and her husband enjoyed traveling and purchased a travel trailer in the early 1960s and pulled it all over the US visiting family in friends in Colorado in even years and her brother and sister's families in Idaho on odd years. Normally 4-5 weeks each summer the family traveled seeing the amazing national parks, going both south to Mexico and North to Canada and stopping at almost every roadside marker due to her husband's insatiable curiosity to learn new things. Into her 90s she suffered from frequent falls and was moved to Villa Sorrento Assisted Living in Torrance where she lived her last four years. Her last words to her son were "they take such good care of me here!" At Villa Sorrento she made many friends due to her outgoing personality and her love of meeting new and interesting people, and played tri-ominoes with two new friends one an immigrant from London and the other an LA native that survived the Japanese internment camps. Each day she read the LA Times and the Daily Breeze and loved their crossword puzzles almost to the last month of her life. Visiting with Roxie was a reminder of the elementary classroom where current events and the recently read book were discussed and enjoyed. Please go to the mortuary's website, www.LAfuneral.com or findagrave.com to send the family messages, share memories, or to obtain directions to the services. Please sign the guest book at www.dailybreeze.com/obits. As a lifelong teacher and encourager of teachers, the family asks that in lieu of flowers that donations for student scholarships be sent to Northwest Christian University, 828 E. llth Avenue, Eugene, OR 97401.