A tribute to Roy Lilly, the man we all knew as…

Tributes

A tribute to Roy Lilly

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Adapted from a memorial talk by David Riccio at dedication of the Dr. Roy S. Lilly seminar room


So many graduate students over the years first encountered Roy, or Coach as everyone called him, from his infamous Stats courses. As one student remarked in the course evaluations: “You taught in English but the tests were in Greek!” Roy’s courses were certainly the stuff of legend.

Roy and I came to Kent in the same year, 1965, and despite, or because of, the fact that we had virtually no professional interests in common, we quickly became close friends and remained so until the very end.


A few basics about the Coach

He came to Kent State University straight out of Princeton’s PhD program in Psychology, with a specialty in Pyschometrics.  His research accomplishments were real, but limited—it was not easy to attract graduate students to tackle problem in Psychometrics!!

Coach Lilly’s service to the University was nothing short of incredible. Even though we were close friends I had not realized just how much he’d done in that domain. He served on over 25 major committees (not counting any at the College or Dept level). He has chaired numerous search committees for major administrative positions, including the following: Dean of the Graduate College; Vice-President for Research and Graduate Studies; and Director of School of Communication Studies. He has been co-chair of the Faculty/Staff Campaign for Kent since 2001.

Perhaps his single most important contribution was to serve as Interim Dean of the College of A&S in 1991-92. During a time of administrative musical chairs, Dr. Lilly agreed (against his better judgment) to become the Acting Dean for 6 months. The 6 dragged into 18 and came at a particularly painful time when state budgetary cuts were having a devastating impact on the university. It was Roy’s task to translate the severe cuts into drastic reductions in the department budgets and still keep the academic ship afloat. He managed somehow but it was a depressing job that took a toll on him. He has not a mean bone in his body so this responsibility meant agonizing over many difficult decisions. From our various conversations at that time I know that he spent many a sleep-disturbed night trying to find reasonable solutions in the face of unreasonable demands from the state. If Roy had had administrative ambitions one might consider his efforts valuable but slightly less than heroic. However, he had no such ambitions, but wished only to return to professing in his department.

His extensive contributions to all aspects of the University were recognized a few years ago when we was awarded the President’s Medal, recognizing more than 37 years of service to the University.  This medal represents the highest honor a faculty member can receive at KSU. 

We all knew him simply as “Coach” and for good reason.  He was the player-coach of a very competitive City League basketball team (and the perennial winner of the Most Valuable Player award—an award decided on by him, of course.) He was an avid sports fan who rounded up his colleageues for season tickets to football and basketball games to keep up the support for those teams even through the many difficult seasons for those teams.  He was also a gifted and natural athlete in his own right.

There are many wonderful stories about Coach, but for the purposes of brevity, I will offer one of my favorites to give you a glimpse of of his quick wit and his sense of humor.

The legend goes that Coach and the head basketball coach, Jim McDonald, were walking across campus when a colleague of ours, spotted Roy ahead of her and hollered out “Hey, Coach”. Naturally, the basketball coach started to turn around.  Without batting an eye, Roy stopped him by saying, “No, Jim, she means the real Coach!”

That’s who Roy was to so many of us--the real Coach.

Click here to find out how you can help honor the memory of Coach and all those fighting (and in memory of those lost in the fight) against cancer and other life-threatening diseases.


(Here’s a larger version of the picture that appears above.  Roy is standing behind me in this picture, no doubt admiring my organizational prowess.)
RoyandDave.jpg

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