Johanna Tilley

She was Johanna (pronounced the German way), and then Puddie, and then Jo (but never Joann), and then Mom, and then Miss Josie, and then Oma, and most recently "The Keeper of the Keys" (a title she gave herself in jest, but which was strictly accurate). Johanna Christine Tilley (nee Losch) left us on September 12, 2023, after a long and heroic struggle with breast cancer. She is survived by her devoted husband of forty-six years, Alton Grey Tilley, her son Stefan Dolgert (Monique) and grandson Beren Deveaux, her three sisters Barbara Torok, Linda Strachan (Doug), and Rebecca Losch, her niece Kate Strachan (Ikuo), and her nephew Dallas Strachan. We will hold a memorial service for her at Lawnview Cemetery in Rockledge on Friday May 24, 2024, at 11 a.m., and in lieu of flowers please consider making a donation to the American Cancer Society www.cancer.org or the Irvine Animal Care Center https://www.cityofirvine.org/irvine-animal-care-center/donate-support#online

Johanna was born in Philadelphia in 1940, to Herman and Hildegard (nee May) Losch. Her parents had both come to the United States from Germany in the 1920s, and she grew up immersed in the rich cultural world of Philadelphia's German-American community. Tragically her mother Hildegard died in 1945, so Puddie and her sister Barbara were shuttled between many relatives while their father worked at factories, most especially their loving uncles and aunts, Wilhelm and Elsie Losch and Charles and Nancy Bird. When Herman remarried Alma Belke (in 1947) Puddie and Barbara were able to come home, and they were lucky enough to be joined in sisterhood by Linda and then Rebecca - a lifelong bond of friendship that sustained her through the most trying times of her illness.

Jo was a student in the first class at Neshaminy High School to go all the way through and was active throughout her career there, especially in theater where as a senior she co-directed the school play. Though she hoped to continue on to teacher's college, life took her in another direction and she became a secretary instead; she was certified at 90 words per minute though she claimed she could do 100, no problem. She loved her time working at the University of Pennsylvania through the 1960s (she also said she dated "a lot" in those days...ahem), in both the German Department and the Dean of Students office, where she also met her lifelong friend, Drusilla. While in the German Department she met her first husband, Paul Dolgert, who was trying to join the German Club but was broke, so she loaned him the money; in the Dean's Office she got to speak with the parents of troubled students, which was how she received a gift bottle of perfume from Lauren Bacall ("that's what classy people did," Jo said).

Mom left Penn when she became a mother to Stefan, and she was as dedicated a mom as ever was put on this earth. She was meticulous and thoughtful and passed on her love of learning to her son, but more than that she was a tireless source of fun and playful innovation. Stefan likes astronomy? Let's make our own star-chart light box. Stefan is in a play about the Trojan War? Let's make some armor and helmets from scratch. Always resourceful, that one, and with a spirited laugh she was happy to take on any challenge. When she and Barbara had to clean out their grandmother's home in Florida and move her into senior living, it was "Out!" they yelled to each other over and over again, as they sifted through what was apparently quite a mess. After she bravely divorced her first husband in the mid-70s (this was not popular with either family), things got tight - no heat in the winter in Philadelphia is no joke - but she turned every problem into an adventure and so Stefan was never the wiser, especially as she joyfully motored around town in her beloved white Olds Cutlass.

Miss Josie found love again in the later-70s, with her second husband Grey, and this led to a move to Irvine, California. She had never so much as wanted to even visit California, and for a long time she made fun of how everyone there seemed to think everything was so "cool" (said in "surfer dude" accent)...but in time she grew to love the place (though not the freeways) and any temperature lower than 70 she would describe as "raw." Miss Josie went back to work and soon moved up from secretary to office manager, at Orange County companies like Consolidated Micrographics and Flojet, and was a trusted, loyal employee and a leader who always put her people before herself. And in her later years, despite her illnesses multiplying, every morning would be still spent with Grey, doing the crossword together for hours, which they even managed to do without any assistance from the thesaurus (for the most part).

Johanna loved to sing while she played guitar, mainly folk-ballads in the style of John Denver or old standards like "Life is Like a Mountain Railroad." She would later shift to playing on her upright piano, but perhaps surprisingly in later life it was sports talk-radio that occupied her, rather than listening to music. Throughout the night, especially after midnight, you could hear "The Ben Maller Show" coming from her bedroom, and she was always ready to talk the latest news about USC football, Duke basketball, or what was going on with the Lakers or Eagles.

After the birth of her grandson, Beren, she heartily embraced the German nickname for grandmother, Oma, as her favored title. Though on opposite sides of the continent most of the time, she followed every piece of news about him with earnest joy, saw him as much as her illness allowed, and loved to introduce him to bits of German culture, Everly Brothers tunes, mid-1980s technology, and any of Stefan's old toys she held onto (and boy did she still have a few). And when Oma appeared on Skype to talk with Beren it was always in the presence of the faithful Blue, a giant stuffed dog that Beren had won (legitimately) at Legoland, and which she tended as if it were one of her living companion animals.

Johanna was an animal lover for all her days, from her childhood pet duck Andy and bunny rabbit Cottontail (who ate and lived happily together for many years), to cats she inherited (Jenny, then Boston), to her beloved companion dogs (Tinkerbell, Shep, Smokey, Little Honey, Shadow, and frequent guest Bandit), to the many stray dogs she took in (Chance, Miss Goody Two-Shoes, and others whose names are now lost). But no stray was more important to her than the injured turtledove she adopted, Skye, upon whom she lavished as much care as a bird could take for more than two decades (and who still to this day perhaps waits for her return).

As "Keeper of the Keys" she was the literal and figurative source of all important information relevant to the family. Yes of course this meant balancing the checkbook and paying the bills and keeping the receipts for the taxes (everything always in its proper place), but also (more importantly) all the family records of the odyssey from Germany to America. She kept up her German pretty well, collected all the old family photographs and the bibles in old German script (she could read it, her son wishes he could), and even sifted through church records in Bavaria in-person (!!) to figure out if a 19th century ancestor was actually the illegitimate child of a German noble family. While the records may have proven unreliable on that subject, Keeper of the Keys Johanna, German-American descendant of the long-forgotten Waldensians exiled from medieval France, never wavered in her dedication to tending the memory of her family's heritage.

We are laying Johanna to rest, surrounded by her family members at Lawnview Cemetery in Rockledge, PA. Her mother, father, stepmother, and infant half-brother are across the pathway from her, but lying just next to her are her grandmother Johanna Brandt May Cooper, her great-grandmother Margarethe Brandt, and her great-grandaunt Elizabeth. Margarethe was the first of the family to come over from Germany to the US (first visiting in 1881) and no one honored our family traditions more than Johanna, so she can be at peace where she belongs.

As she always said, with a twinkle in her eye: "Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, if you don't like my hair, then take your hand off my b--- ...sweater."