Lily A. Serbia, of Elmhurst, Ill., passed away peacefully on March 2, 2024.
Lily was born on July 19, 1937 in Chicago, Ill., and was the only daughter of the late Rustico and the late Raquel (nee Colunga) DeGuzman, and younger sister to the late Plutarco DeGuzman.
Lily’s career-woman persona began as a young girl when she would gather and sell bundles of sticks for kindling. She has fond memories of her and her friends using that ‘income’ to buy candy. Some of those friends are women with whom she spoke on the phone on a daily basis until the very end. During high school, she worked at the main branch of the Chicago Public Library.
Less than a year after graduating from Wells High School, and while out at a club with girlfriends, she caught the eye of a dashing young man singing on stage. Six months later on June 15, 1956, she married the crooner who became the great love of her life, the late Aurelio Serbia, at City Hall and celebrated later that evening at Mambo City.
While she was working as a waitress at the Woolworth lunch counter, a co-worker recommended her for a job as a new-phone-service order taker at Illinois Bell. Through a series of promotions and the breakup of ‘Ma Bell,’ she joined the AT&T HR team and worked tirelessly as a Manager specializing in internal EEO investigations at the dawn of the Affirmative Action movement. She retired from AT&T in 1996.
In her retirement, and after the death of her beloved husband, Lily traveled the country and world with friends. She joined a senior center and was especially enthusiastic about their tech classes, starting with digital photography and progressing to computers and ultimately smart phones. She loved her iPhone, conducted all her business and banking on it, and was an expert on the latest iOS updates, even giving her family members the lowdown on all the new features. She also became a vocal backseat driver and purchased way too many purses and wallets!
She always kept up with music, current events and politics (regularly posting her strong opinions on X), was a Taste of Chicago enthusiast and rabid fan of all Chicago sports teams, but especially the Cubs, Bears and the Bulls dynasty of the 1990s. She was whip smart and also had a wicked sense of humor that often times was naughty! Although she wasn’t very ambulatory in recent years, she always managed to disappear faster than Mario Andretti in the grocery store if you turned away for a second. At her retirement community she was affectionately called the ‘Chief’ because her friends claimed ‘she knew everything.’
She was exceptionally proud of her children and their spouses, grandchildren and great grandchildren. And her family is particularly saddened that she won’t be present for her granddaughter Paige’s wedding to Brian Tierney, and her daughter Amanda’s wedding to Dave Biscan.
She is survived by her daughters Elisa (Enrique) Fernandez, Lydia (Jim) Brock, and Amanda Faber; her grandchildren Renee (Jonathan) Porter, Alexa (Peter) Mostowski, Paige Fernandez, Stevie (Marlin) Brock; great-grandchildren Mason Porter, Mirabelle Porter, Anastasia Mostowski and Luca Brock; and several nieces and nephews.
She was preceded in death by her father Rustico DeGuzman (1971), her mother Raquel DeGuzman (1981), her husband Aurelio Serbia (1997), her son-in-law Robert Faber (2015), and her brother Plutarco DeGuzman (2020).
Services will be private.