Lillian (Bonnie) Taylor
Bonnie, 93 passed away peacefully at home on May 11, 2013 after a long illness. Bonnie was born in Du Quoin, Ill., on August 28, 1919, to Laura and George Clark, their third of six children.
Bonnie was blessed with a rare soprano voice. Her early career in entertainment in the 1940s took her from NBC Chicago to Miami luxury clubs to The Casbah, a fashionable nightclub in New York City. Newspaper columnist Neil Mortimer, a respected critic for the New York Post at the time, wrote a glowing review of her performance. Soon after, Bonnie received a letter from Warner Bros, Hollywood, inviting her to audition for a movie, but then Ron V. Taylor came along.
She married Ron, an officer in the Air Corp. in 1944. They had two children, Pamela and Cameron. They left New York to relocate eventually to Wilton, Conn. and later Stratford, Conn. During her years in Connecticut she sang sacred music at churches and show numbers at private parties and on radio programs. She starred in many Fairfield County community theater musicals, such as Annie Get Your Gun, South Pacific and Pal Joey, and with The Suburbanites, a vocal group of four women, sang at Lincoln Center.
Bonnie and Ron moved to The Landings in 1983 where Bonnie continued to share her talent by singing in the church choir and at local nursing homes. She started a play-reading group where members alternated as hosts and traded places as actors and audience reading one-act plays by the likes of Neil Simon. For many years she played Bridge with her friends at the Plantation Country Club. Before her illness, she was a member of The Landings Garden Club and The Landings Women’s 9-Hole Golf Association and later the 18-Hole Association. (She didn’t hit the ball far, but it was always straight.)
Surviving is her husband of 69 years, Ron; her daughter Pamela Smith of Punta Gorda, Fla.; her son Cameron Taylor and his wife, Stephanie, of Deep River, Conn.; and her grandson, (Pam’s son) Peter Smith of Orlando, Fla.
Bonnie was devoted to her church and her God. She adored her children, their spouses and her grandchild, Peter. To her friends, she was reliable and steadfast, and always known to be ready with a joke and for a good laugh.
A few weeks before Bonnie’s passing, the family gathered at her bedside, held her hands and sang together some of her favorite songs and hymns. Not surprising, it was Bonnie who still remembered all the words to all the songs, and could still hit some of those elusive, yet sweet soprano notes.
Funeral service will be held at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, May 15, 2013 at Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church.
In lieu of flowers, please make a donation to Hospice Savannah, P.O. Box 13190, Savannah, Ga. 31416 or Skidaway Island Presbyterian Church, 50 Diamond Causeway, Savannah, Ga. 31411.