By: Dale M. King
BOCA RATON – George Snow Scholarship Fund President Tim Snow once said this about Emily Lilly: “If anything happens in the city, Emily has a hand in it.”
If you think back over the special activities Emily organized during her 18 years as Boca Raton’s special events guru, you might think she has more than the requisite two hands given to us by our Maker.
And while she’s just retired as Boca’s top events planner, she isn’t giving up the trade. “I have a special events business that I haven’t had a chance to get going. So, after I catch up on some loose ends, I’m going to start that business.”
A resident of Deerfield Beach, she hopes to continue organizing fun activities in both Broward and Palm Beach counties.
For nearly two decades, Emily’s special touch – and her effervescent smile – has been seen at holiday light illuminations, school break activities for kids, home-grown festivals and, of course, the Boca Raton Green Market, which is actually Emily’s own project. Due to budget constraints, the city withdrew funding several years ago, but Emily kept it going anyway.
She admits she got a good dose of “work ethic” growing up on a farm in the Catskill Mountains of New York. Even that farming community held a farmers market – an idea that stuck in Emily’s mind and flowed out when she arrived in Boca years later.
Boca’s former special events lady spent 35 years of her life as a teacher – 26 in New York and nine in Pompano Beach. “I was blessed. I was chosen as the Outstanding Elementary School Teacher in New York and the Outstanding Lutheran Educator in the Florida-Georgia Lutheran School District.”
While teaching in Pompano, she conducted an 80-member children’s choir. “The Pompano Parks and Recreation Department asked me to continue the choir. We performed at all kinds of events.”
From there, she applied for the special events planner’s post in Boca – and got the job. “Oh, wow,” she said. “What an opportunity.” She and her husband had passed through Boca many times. “We saw the remodeled Sanborn Square and marveled at the medians. Little did I know I’d find a role here.”
Emily put her work ethic on the front burner in Boca, tooling around the city in a Jeep to keep track of what was happening.
With retirement now a reality, Emily said she misses “the people I worked with. They made an impression on my life.” She herself feels satisfied knowing she gave back as a teacher and a special events planner.
She said she can now turn to her “bucket list” and do the things she always wanted, but never had time to do – to spend special moments with friends and family, for example.
Emily still deeply loves her husband, who died of Lou Gehrig’s disease three years after they arrived in Boca. “We had three wonderful years together. I credit him with anchoring me here. We developed friendships and a church relationship. I credit him with that.”
She developed an abiding faith growing up as one of 12 children. “I loved school and I loved the teachers. I took the goodness from everyone I met. When you do this, you can’t help but be a better person. I owe this to my family, my teachers, my husband and all the people I have come in contact with.”
Photo by: Yaacov Heller