The Martha s Vineyard Times
Roberta Gilluly Tilton (“Bobbie”), born January 1937 to Walter S. Gilluly and Hilda Marie Norton in Edgartown, departed this life from an undiagnosed heart condition on July 2, 2020, in Providence, R.I.
After her father died in 1941, Bobbie, her mom, and sister Jean moved from their Ocean Heights home to live with her grandparents, Orin Norton, blacksmith, and Elsie Maude Shurtleff, on their farm in Edgartown.
Her favorite memories from childhood were the smell and look of her grandfather’s apple orchard in bloom, swimming in Yvonne Canha’s water ballet classes at the Bend in the Road, tap dance classes, helping her grandfather prune the apple trees, ringing the bell at the Methodist Church with her sister Jean and her grandmother on the day WWII ended, and her first-ever trip off-Island to Boston with her mom and sister after the war, when she was 8 years old.