Luella Lilly B.S. ’59

Even swimming backward, Luella Lilly was always going forward. Known for surging ahead, she set national swimming records, graduated magna cum laude from the College in 1959 after three and half years, and—as teacher, coach, administrator, and mentor—enhanced opportunities and respect for women scholar-athletes during times of unprecedented change and challenge. 

Lue pioneered nationally successful programs as the University of California Berkeley’s first director of women’s intercollegiate athletics. She was inducted into Lewis & Clark’s sports hall of fame in 1988, received the National Association of Collegiate Women Athletics Administrators Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999, and in 2005 became the first female administrator inducted into the University of California Hall of Fame.

“I might not have done what I’ve done in my life without a Lewis & Clark education,” she says. Grateful for her family’s belief in her and for the Max D. and Rose E. Tucker Scholarship that helped fund her education, Lue continues pioneering. Her trust establishes a scholarship to help generations of young women at the College do what she did and still does: move ever forward.