Active until just a few months before her death, Mrs. Riley died at her home with her children.
She was instrumental in creating one of the city’s first historic districts. The Marina Historic District encompassed her Palm Square home, two historic cottages designed by Addison Mizner and the city’s marina. She served as president of the district for 14 years.
She told colorful stories of the “Village by the Sea” Delray of the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, and its long-since-gone gathering spots when the city was a winter mecca for world-class cartoonists, polo players and titans of industry.
And she herself was a world-class supporter of the town she loved, championing causes such as proper fire escapes for its early schools and respect for its residential neighborhoods.
She bore her children before there were any hospitals in southern Palm Beach County. Even before there was an Interstate 95.
“If the baby was coming fast, she told my father to take Federal Highway up to Good Samaritan (Hospital in West Palm Beach). Slow coming babies, they took A1A,” said her daughter, Carolyn Patton, a Federal Highway baby.
In 1998, Mrs. Riley was one of the founders, along with her daughter, of the Sandoway House Nature Center in Delray Beach and later was responsible for its being listed on the National Register of Historic Places. She tended the seaside garden of native plants and purchased items for the center’s gift shop.
Mrs. Riley would tirelessly weed and care for the plants and flowers in summer heat that drove many a younger volunteer indoors.
Twice a month, the city would send workers to help with the heavy chores. She would bake them cakes and other treats to show her appreciation.
Those workers eventually began calling her “Granny,” an endearing term her children and grandchildren had adopted years earlier.
Mrs. Riley was a wonderful cook, who kept myriad recipes in her head that never quite translated onto paper. “I just add enough until it’s right,” she would say. Her sweet pickles, preserves and chutney were much sought-after Christmas gifts.
Mrs. Riley grew up on a farm in Illinois and attended Northern Illinois University before enlisting in the U.S. Navy as a WAVE after the outbreak of World War II. During the war, she met her future husband, Melville Fuller Riley Jr., who served as a Navy lieutenant commander.
A communications officer who trained at Smith and Mount Holyoke colleges, she was one of four WAVES assigned to his squadron when it was stationed at Dinner Key, near Miami.
The Rileys were married on March 2, 1946, honeymooned in Havana and moved to Delray Beach. There they reared their family in a historic oceanfront house built in 1939 for Mr. Riley’s parents by noted architect John Volk.
After the couple’s children were grown, they moved in 1979 to her current home on Palm Square. Mr. Riley died in 1986.
Mrs. Riley is survived by her sister Doris Purgason of Austin, Texas; children Georgia deHavenon of New York City; Melville Fuller Riley III of Boynton Beach; Carolyn Patton of Delray Beach; Saunders Riley of Delray Beach; Alieda Maron of Lakeland and N. Montague Riley of Delray Beach; seven grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
Funeral services were held Jan. 15 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Delray Beach, a church Mrs. Riley attended for more than 60 years. The Rev. William “Chip” Stokes officiated.
Burial followed in the Riley family plot in Pittsburgh, PA.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that contributions in her memory be made to the Sandoway House Nature Center or St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.
Editor’s note: Alieda Riley was a Coastal Star in this newspaper in May 2009. Her daughter, Carolyn Patton, is a founding partner of The Coastal Star.
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