SheilaStoneDillMemorial

Thank you for your interest in the life of Sheila Dill.

Please peruse the family's memories, or download the print-ready version.

Yes, we're still accepting memories! Please send us a note if you'd like to have your memory of Sheila included here.

Viewing people from different angles can be a startling experience.

As children, it's easy to put the people around us into boxes according to their relationship with us. In adulthood, however, most of us come to realize that our kin, family, friends, teachers, mentors, and even passersby are more than the silhouettes they cast in our minds. It's one of those moments of realization that I'd like to share.

On both sides of my family I am among the youngest of my cousins, which means I have taken advantage of few opportunities to connect with my grandparents. When age had made them distinguished and wise, I was young and stupid. When I had reached (relative) maturity, they began to die.

Yet I do have a story. One ordinary school day in elementary school, as our English lesson began, I stumbled across a name casually attached to our afternoon reading assignment. That name was Sheila Stone Dill. I never took the opportunity, when we later moved to Nevada and began making the drive to Gardnerville regularly, to ask Grandma how she felt about her contribution to my second grade English class in Missouri. I'm not certain that I ever told her, though I hope that I did. It was only in writing this story and consulting with my Mom that I learned that Sheila had contributed many writings for the same purpose.

Speaking with people who took greater advantage of their interactions with Sheila than I, a picture emerges of someone I would have liked to know better, and the strong impact that she had stretches from my second-grade classroom to the lives of other people I love.