Lee Frances (Day) Theriot, widow of (Edward) Dennis Theriot, Jr., passed away in Bradenton, Florida on Wednesday, April 20, 2022, at the age of 83.
Born in Valdosta, Georgia, she grew up in Bradenton, where she spent many a Saturday afternoon watching a Roy Rogers or Hopalong Cassidy matinee and afterward playing cowboys with her dear friend Alice Jean. A love of animals and make-believe would remain with her throughout her life.
Lee met Dennis as an undergraduate at "Dear old Duke" and, after marrying in 1960, they lived in a number of different places as he completed his graduate degree and began his career. She recalled with fondness their days of scrimping while they lived on her salary as a microbiology laboratory technician. "Jack Mackerel" (mackerel in a can) was a staple, which had the dual advantages of being cheap and so terrible tasting that a single can of it lasted a remarkably long time. Their apartment in New Haven, Connecticut gave them access to Manhattan and they found budget-friendly ways to catch shows and explore the city.
Lee was also proud of the research she participated in at that time. Working in the laboratory of Paul Howard-Flanders, Lee performed genetic screens in bacteria to identify genes that were necessary for the repair of DNA damage after bacterial cells were exposed to ultraviolet light or to X-rays. One of the genes Lee discovered was named "LexA" as an abbreviation for "Lee’s X-ray mutant." LexA turned out to be a critical regulator in the bacterial "SOS response" for DNA damage repair, and it continues to be prominently featured in textbooks about bacterial genetics.
After Sharon was born in 1966, Lee stopped working in the laboratory but continued to be interested in microbiology for the rest of her life. After Dennis completed his Ph.D., their next adventure was to move to Geneva, Switzerland, where Dennis was a postdoctoral fellow. They saw quite a bit of Europe with toddler Sharon in tow, and Julie joined the family there in 1967.
After short stints in Berkeley, California and Los Alamos, New Mexico, the family settled in Wheaton, Illinois where they would remain until Julie and Sharon both completed high school and college.
Lee read to "her girls" almost every night and took them to every kind of lesson: swimming, piano, ice skating, roller skating, archery, drawing, tennis and more. Soft serve vanilla ice cream followed almost every swimming lesson at the Y. She was ahead of her time with the dedicated use of sunscreen (which her girls appreciated later in life) and came up with many a creative way to solve problems and save time. Straight bang cutting (very, very straight) was achieved with a piece of Scotch tape attached to the bangs and cut off. To prevent lunchtime drips and stickiness, she mixed peanut butter and jelly together long before the debut of Smucker’s Goober. (The stripes of Smucker’s Goober were admittedly a bit more attractive.)
She was determined to make every holiday special. She sewed Halloween costumes by hand (like baby bluebirds with loads of blue feathers sewn on by hand). She superintended the dying of Easter eggs and her girls had Easter baskets and matching Easter dresses each year. Although she had no passion for cooking, she would let her girls choose their birthday dinners and made homemade cinnamon rolls from scratch (a treasured family recipe) for every Thanksgiving and Christmas. A humidifier humming next to the bed, and shell pasta with butter as a special meal, were her go-to for any child with a cold or flu.
She was an avid collector of Oz books and memorabilia and the family travelled to the Wizard of Oz convention in Castle Park, Michigan each summer for many years. She made many dear friends there and pursued any missing title or upgrade to her collection with great passion and excitement.
Lee also kept a flawlessly clean and organized home. Every box in the closet had a label, as did every leftover in the freezer. If she corresponded with someone, there was a page of pre-printed labels with their name and address, carefully preserved in zip lock bags. Every drawer was organized "just so" and every paper that might be of any future usefulness was filed immediately. (Alas, the apple has fallen far from the immediate-filing tree with both of her daughters.)
After her girls entered junior high, Lee went back to school and became a computer programmer. She worked at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois until both she and Dennis retired in 1993.
They moved to Longboat Key, Florida, to a small house on stilts with a lovely ocean view. Every sunny morning, they could be found walking hand in hand along the beach. They attended cultural events in Sarasota, enjoyed Dennis’ very fine cooking, and Lee continued to attend flea markets in pursuit of Oz books and other treasures. Lee long wished for a carousel horse, but Dennis made her promise that she would only buy one that could fit into the back seat of the Toyota Camry. "Folly," with her front hoofs raised in a gallop, was just barely able to leap over this requirement and became a fixture in the Theriot living room.
In 2006 Dennis was diagnosed with metastatic melanoma and they moved to Arbor Oaks in Bradenton. Although she hated every part of the drives to Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa for treatment, Lee was by Dennis’ side for every surgery and doctor’s visit. When she was determined, there was no quit in Lee Theriot.
Dennis passed away one month shy of their 50th anniversary, in July 2010. It was a devastating loss for Lee, but she took over management of the house and finances flawlessly, even though it was for the first time in her life. Shortly after this, she developed symptoms of spinocerebellar ataxia, a genetic condition which had afflicted her father. Although it affected her gait and speech, she was grateful that it did not affect her mind and she bravely maintained her independence. She found comfort in her favorite books and her beloved parakeets, Lucky and Plucky. She fought her daughters hard on subjects like the need for hearing aids and overnight home health aides, and passed away victorious on those fronts, at home, with her daughters and her dear friend Mary Ellen by her side.
Lee is survived by her daughters, Julie Theriot and Sharon Theriot, as well as her sister Sue (Day) Falconer, brother-in-law Robert Falconer, brother Allen Day, niece Diane (Falconer) Tarkany and nephew David Falconer. Her dear sister, Jane Day, passed away in 2017.
