Lila Stewart Bishop

A memorial service for Lila Stewart Bishop, 96, who died Jan. 20, will begin at noon Tuesday at the Methodist Church, 1612 Fourth St. in La Grande.

Lila was born July 6, 1912, to S. Clyde and Janie Maxey Stewart in Hartford, Kan. After graduating in music from what was then Kansas State Teacher's College in Emporia, she married J. Lynn Bishop in 1933, a fellow music major who died in 2000.

Together they served in music ministries at Lowman United Methodist Church in Topeka, Kan., and later at La Grande United Methodist Church, where she was organist from 1949 or so until retirement in 1976.

Music was a large part of Lila's life as she taught piano and organ lessons and always worked to make the arts important in the La Grande community. But although Eastern Oregon University brought the Bishops to La Grande, it was the mountains and high lakes and sense of community that kept them here.

Survivors include her daughter and son-in-law, Linda and Hugo Hartig, of Waukesha, Wis., her two grandsons; siblings, Lorraine Cantwell of Riverside, Calif., and C.E. "Bud" Stewart of Manhattan, Kan.; and many other relatives.

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