Deona Mae Lilly

Deona Mae Lilly, 90, passed away on Saturday, October 4, 2025, in California.

Services are pending with Christy Smith Funeral Home.

Deona Mae Lilly was born on January 31, 1935, to Richard C. and Medora A. (Dodge) Lilly in Sioux City, Iowa. She grew up in Southeastern South Dakota and attended East High School in Sioux City, Iowa. After graduating from high school, she worked for one year and then attended Wayne State College in Wayne, Nebraska, where she earned her B.A. in Physical Education.

Her first teaching job was in Florida, where she taught P.E. to all grades. After teaching one year in Florida, she moved to California to attend Physical Therapy School at the Children's Hospital in Hollywood and attended First Presbyterian Church in Hollywood. After she graduated, she worked as a physical therapist at Los Angeles County Hospital. She then returned to teaching P.E. for a second year to add to her teaching experience.

The experience helped her qualify to teach overseas for the Department of Defense Dependent Schools, where she spent four years teaching P.E. in Japan, Germany, and Turkey.

She returned to California, went to USC, and earned a master's degree in physical therapy and a PhD in education (went part-time to school while teaching full-time at California State University, Northridge). Her teaching positions were at California State University, Northridge; California State University, Long Beach; the College of Osteopathic Medicine in Missouri; Southwest Baptist University; and Azusa Pacific University.

For her next chapter, Deona began a Master of Divinity program at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena and served as a part-time pastor at Ross Memorial Presbyterian Church in Stockton, Missouri. Finally, she started working at the Presbyterian Church of the Master in 2005. She continued working there until September 2022 and remained at the church as a volunteer till leaving for her full-time assignment in Heaven.

She is preceded in death by her parents.