Lois Churchill Obituary

News story
By Mark Zaborney
Blade staff writer

Lois Churchill, who was committed to community service, family, and the family business of which she was part, died May 26 in Ohio Living Swan Creek. She was 93.

She'd had a heart attack in late April, her daughter Cindy Conway said. Before that, she continued to attend meetings at Walt Churchill's Market. Her husband, Walt Churchill, Jr., is president and chief executive of the now employee-owned company.

At Christmas, the entire family came to the Perrysburg home she and her husband shared - a longstanding tradition. And she played host last summer, as in summers before, to a family reunion at the Catawba Island Club, where she and her husband were members and docked their boat, New Adventure.

For a Mother's Day article in 2018, Mrs. Churchill told The Blade: "Mothers need to give tough, but unconditional, love. Every human is unique. All need a healthy dose of patience."

Mrs. Conway said: "She was the matriarch. Everybody looked up to her."

Mrs. Churchill had been a leader in Red Cross and United Way campaigns. She took part in the Toledo Symphony Women's League. With her husband, she was a supporter of the Toledo Museum of Art, the 577 Foundation, and the Perrysburg schools. She was a member of the Perrysburg League of Women Voters and for a decade was on the Perrysburg Board of Zoning Appeals.

She was a longtime Junior League of Toledo sustainer. She became active in the league in the late 1950s as a young mother of three daughters. She found the Junior League immediately "offered opportunities for community involvement that were totally new to me," she recalled in 2002 for a Junior League profile. "In addition, the league continued my broad education in such things as time management, fund-raising, board training, and empowerment."

She came to community service motivated.

"It was part of her nature," Mrs. Conway said. "She was a homemaker, but also found satisfaction in the volunteer work she did. She was very smart and very organized. She wasn't a shrinking violet. She would say what she thought."

She had a leading role in a Junior League project at what was then the Medical College of Ohio in support of emotionally troubled children. A joint venture at the start, in the early 1970s, between MCO and the Toledo Public Schools, it evolved into the Kobacker Psychoeducational Center.

Dr. Joel Zrull, a former MCO chairman of psychiatry, wrote in A Community of Scholars - Recollections of the Early Years of the Medical College of Ohio that Junior League representatives were advisory board members.

"An important member from the Junior League was Mrs. Lois Churchill, who provided leadership and sound advice," Dr. Zrull wrote.

Mrs. Churchill in her own 2002 recollection of Junior League service noted she was still the advisory committee's chairman decades after its founding.

"It has been a lifelong love affair," Mrs. Churchill said then.

She also served on the MCO Foundation board and on the MCO development committee.

Mrs. Churchill credited her league training as preparation for the business role into which she'd married. Her husband was president of Churchill's Super Markets, as it was known then, and his father, the late Maj. Gen. Walter A. Churchill, was chairman. Mrs. Churchill became secretary of the corporation and director of consumer affairs - and she had a leading role at the former Walt Churchill's Adventure Shops on Byrne Road, which sold attire and equipment for a variety of outdoor pursuits.

The couple climbed mountains and skied and went kayaking. They had sailboats and then power boats for lake excursions. They had been members of the Perrysburg Boat Club and North Cape Yacht Club in Monroe County. And she was supportive as her husband trained for more than 20 consecutive Boston Marathons.

"We made a really good team. She was always very easy to be around," Mr. Churchill said.

Mrs. Churchill had been a trustee and treasurer of the Toledo Country Club, where she was a 48-year member and served on many committees. She recently advised that she wished to resign from the finance committee, Phil McWeeny, Toledo Country Club's president, said by email.

"When told that she was on the committee to provide wisdom and history she graciously replied, 'Well in that case I will continue,' which she did, and until a short time ago," Mr. McWeeny said. "We are very saddened by her passing. She will be missed."

She had served on the vestry of St. Timothy's Episcopal Church in Perrysburg.

Born April 27, 1929, to Edith and Julius Fralich, she grew up on Beverly Drive in South Toledo and was a 1947 graduate of Libbey High School, where she was secretary-treasurer of the National Honor Society, president of the literary society, and yearbook class editor.

She received a bachelor's degree in 1951 from the University of Toledo, where she had been a mathematics major and practice-taught algebra at Libbey High. She was president of Delta Delta Delta sorority and was a member of Peppers women's honorary and Kappa Delta Pi education honorary.

She was formerly married to the late Mason Rowley.

Surviving are her husband, Walter A. Churchill, Jr., whom she married April 19, 1974; daughters, Cynthia Conway, Lynn Darr, and Leigh Tremp; stepdaughter, Gail Churchill; stepson, David Churchill; four grandchildren; three step-grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.

Friends and family will be received starting at noon June 24 at Witzler-Shank-Walker Funeral Home, Perrysburg, where memorial services will begin at 2 p.m.

The family suggests tributes to the 577 Foundation or the Toledo Art Museum.

Blade society editor Barbara Hendel contributed to this report.