Lucille Kyser, 1923-2021

I first wrote the below tribute on March 3rd, the day after my grandmother passed away. I'm posting it here mainly for posterity's sake. A much fuller, more in-depth tribute is in order for this wonderful woman, who would have turned 98 this past Saturday.

My grandmother, Lucille Kyser, passed away yesterday after living a full and abundant 97 years.

She was the only grandparent I ever truly knew, and she had the love, energy, vivacity and generosity to occupy all four grandparent roles. My childhood was marked by extended stays at her house in Hallsville, Texas, where my cousins Richard, Lindsey and I would spend our days with her.

There are no words to describe my admiration for my Grandma. She lived independently into her late nineties. She weathered the untimely death of a son – my father, John – and accepted the losses in her life with grace and humility. She was steadfast in her faith and dedicated to her church. I take solace in knowing she has been reunited with my father, her husband Hubert, and her parents in Heaven.

I can safely say she was the only resident of Hallsville whose favorite movies included Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining and the films of Woody Allen – and as she introduced each of these to me, my understanding and appreciation of a different kind of cinema grew.

Her curiosity in the cultural arts was present from the start. Living in St. Louis during the 1940s, she would frequent travelling performances from George Balanchine’s Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo company. This curiosity never diminished – she would often go out and see movies just so she could talk about them with me, which unquestionably led her to films no grandmother should see.

She was a dutifully willing participant in a number of my childhood films – to her great embarrassment, she was once recognized in the halls of my elementary school by my teacher, who had seen her committed performance as Ben Gunn in my adaptation of Treasure Island.

She was present at every seminal moment of my life – my birthday parties, every one of my high school plays, my graduation from NYU. She’d always claim each trip to New York would be her last – but then, like clockwork, she’d inevitably return within the next year, ready to brave the New York City subway system, meet my college friends, and see Broadway shows.

To say that she leaves a hole in my life – and in the lives of the entire Kyser family – would be a massive understatement.