Ann (Alice) Conroy

Conroy, Ann (Alice) 4/3/1929 - 12/13/2018 Kalamazoo, MI Conroy, (Alice) Ann Conroy (4/3/1929-12/13/2018), 89, died in Kalamazoo, Michigan on December 13. She was the daughter of Joseph Wilbur and Alice Estelle (Fisher) Wilbur. She graduated from Sexton High School, Lansing, Michigan, and received her B.A. from Michigan State University. In 1954 she married Harold P. Conroy. Their daughter, Nancy A. Conroy of San Juan Capistrano, California, survives her. With her husband and daughter, Ann lived in many places around the world including Singapore, Thailand, and the Caribbean. In California she and her husband built a house in Del Mar overlooking Pacific Ocean, and they were instrumental in making the area an incorporated city. They eventually sold their home and bought a boat in the Netherlands to motor down France's inland waterways, then to sail the Mediterranean. Later, they sailed from Majorca to Antiqua and ran a charter yacht in the Caribbean for 3 years. Their daughter, Nancy, celebrated her first birthday in the British West Indies. Widowed in 1972, Ann returned to Kalamazoo and was the fourth generation to live in her family home (twice on the Kalamazoo Home Tour). Ann was active in music, poetry, and the arts and participated in Friends of the Arts (President, Board of Directors), the Kalamazoo Arts Council (Secretary), Cable Access TV (taping Fontana), and the KIA, as well as having worked on Poetry on the Bus and Symphony in the Park. She had several one-artist art shows featuring watercolor, bronze, and painting on silks. She was a winner in the Sesquicentennial Poetry contest. We will remember Ann for her love of nature, her enthusiasm and exuberance, her joy in life. Donations in her name may be made to the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts. The date for a memorial for Ann will be announced later.