We all document our lives in some way, but few do it as meticulously as Lucille Taliaferro.
On Sunday, the Chicago Tribune ran a story recounting the 87-year-old woman’s remarkable life, but sadly revealed she is now a ward of Cook County, with no known friends or relatives. However, since her piece ran more than 100 people have written to the newspaper, many sharing their memories of the never-married woman who traveled the world, wrote books of poetry and aimed to leave the world a better place.
The story of how Taliaferro’s biography ended up in a newspaper began in an unusual place: a McDonald’s. Nearly three years ago employees noticed the elderly woman had fallen asleep, alone. They contacted authorities who brought her home and made several shocking discoveries: two feet of standing water in her basement, no electricity … and a house that carefully displayed a life’s worth of artifacts, painstakingly displayed by theme in each room.
As Cook County officials made plans to move her into a nursing home, they also took care to protect the items she had carefully collected for the past eight decades. Her attorneys allowed the Tribune access to the documents even though Taliaferro declined to participate in the piece, feeling that she would have wanted her story known if she was more lucid.
Taliaferro’s artifacts revealed that the African-American woman graduated fifth in her high school class, earned a bachelor’s degree in social studies, a master’s degree in education and wrote more than 20 self-published books from 1976 to 1993. She never married, although Valentine’s cards and other items hint that there was a man in her life at one time. She also served in World War II and the Korean War and her military mementos have caught the eye of the folks at the U.S. Army Women’s Museum in Ft. Lee, Va., which plans to display them.
On Wednesday, the Tribune published a follow-up piece about Taliaferro, revealing that a number of people came forward with connections to the one-of-a-kind woman. A doctor who treated her in the 1990s recalled the time she gave him a signed copy of one of her books as a thank-you. The daughter of one of Taliaferro’s longtime friends recounted tales of the women sipping wine and listening to classical music. Taliaferro herself has even perked up enough to enjoy the attention. As she reflected on her life this week, she said she’s glad she has set an example for others.
“That was my objective in life,” she said.
An objective she clearly achieved.