Tuesday, June 27, 2000 | 10:14 a.m.
After earning an art degree from the University of Nebraska, Lillian Clary dabbled in the field for a while before putting away her brushes for about 50 years.
In her 70s Clary returned to her art and began working in pastels, painting portraits of famous Americans such as President John Kennedy, and with oils, capturing flowers and other objects on canvas.
She passed on the gift of the arts to her children and grandchildren. Her son, Las Vegas attorney Patrick Clary, holds posts in the Southern Nevada Musical Arts Society and the Las Vegas Philharmonic. Her daughter, Joan Davidson of Dana Point, Calif., taught music in Las Vegas schools. A granddaughter is a violinist and a grandson is a musical theater actor.
Lillian Roth Clary, who also was an accomplished singer and a longtime supporter of Clark County Democratic politics, died Thursday of complications from old age at a retirement home in Orange County, Calif. She was 92.
A graveside service for the Las Vegas resident of 48 years will be held noon Saturday at Bunkers Memory Garden Memorial Park and Mortuary.
The Southern Nevada Musical Arts Society is scheduled to perform the Verdi Requiem on Nov. 26 in Clary's memory on what would have been her 93rd birthday. The only other time the organization has performed that piece was in 1981, when Clary's husband, longtime local surveyor Ernest Clary, died.
"My mother gave me the great gift of music," said Pat Clary, who has several pieces of his mother's artwork on display in his office. "She made me practice the piano in my youth over my objections, but it has given me so much pleasure over the years."
For several years Lillian sang and her sister, Clair, played the piano as they appeared on Midwest radio shows as the Roth Sisters.
Born Lillian Roth in Lincoln Neb., on Nov. 26, 1907, she was the younger of two children of cobbler Fred Roth and his wife, the former Elizabeth Braun. She married Ernest H. Clary, a fellow University of Nebraska graduate, in 1939.
The Clarys came to Southern Nevada in 1941, when Ernest became chief civil engineer at Basic Magnesium Inc., in Henderson. They left Southern Nevada in 1945 but returned for good in 1952. Ernest served as North Las Vegas city engineer in the late 1950s.
Lillian served as secretary of the Clark County Women's Democratic Club and was active in the Methodist Church. She remained in Las Vegas until 1996, when declining health forced her to move to an out-of-state care facility.
In addition to her son and daughter, Clary is survived by five grandchildren; one great-grandchild; two nephews; and three nieces.
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