Obituaries
Betty Lou Wilbur, 94, Lake Forest
Info: Wenban Funeral Home 847-234-0022 or www.wenbanfh.com.
Betty Lou Wilbur (née Fannin), 94, resident of Lake Forest, Illinois, left us on March 5, 2023. She was born February 25, 1929, to parents Elsa and Ernest Fannin of Phoenix, Arizona. Betty Lou grew up in Phoenix, where she enjoyed riding horses, playing with her cousins at her grandfather’s ranch, and traveling with her family to Mexico.
She attended Stanford University and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1950 with a bachelor’s degree in Art History. She married Richard Sloan Wilbur, M.D. of Palo Alto, California in 1951. She was a devoted and loving mother to three active boys.
Betty Lou and Richard resided for ten years in Los Altos Hills, California in a house she designed. When Richard took a position with the American Medical Association in Chicago, they moved with their three children to Lake Forest. When her husband served in the Defense Department during the Vietnam War, she was commissioned by the Secretary of Defense to chair an advisory
committee of wives of the military Surgeons General. In this position, she made multiple trips
around the world to inspect military bases.
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Betty Lou and Richard were enthusiastic life-long explorers, and their travels took them to every continent except Antarctica. She particularly enjoyed her visits to Sweden, Greece, Ethiopia, and Bali.
In Lake Forest, she was an active member and sometime President of the League of Women Voters, a singer in Senior Choir at the Church of the Holy Spirit and painted with area artist groups. She was a talented painter of portraits and landscapes in oils.
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Betty Lou was a wonderful grandmother, spending time baking and traveling with her grandchildren, teaching them a love for the arts, and taking them to symphonies and operas.
She is survived by her beloved husband of 72 years, Richard S. Wilbur, her sons Andrew (Debra) of Lake Bluff, Illinois, Peter of Chicago, Illinois, Thomas (Rosseta) of Vienna, Virginia, grandchildren Karen, Curtis, Clayton, Elsa, and Catherine, as well as many cousins, nieces, and nephews. She is preceded in death by her parents, Elsa and Ernest Fannin.
Please join Betty Lou’s family for a service of Choral Evensong, June 4th, 2023, at 5:00p.m. at Church of the Holy Spirit 400 E Westminster, Lake Forest, IL.
Info: Wenban Funeral Home 847-234-0022 or www.wenbanfh.com.
