School’s Adopted ‘Granny’ Dies at 83

Lillian Lewis--an 83-year-old retired dishwasher who rode buses 80 miles a day to serve as the hall monitor at Granada Hills High School, where her brusqueness eventually endeared her to students--has died.

Lewis, who was nicknamed “Granny” by students, died in her sleep about midnight Monday, apparently of a heart attack, her daughter said Wednesday.

An energetic woman with a booming voice and a no-nonsense demeanor that only partially concealed her good-humored nature, Lewis sat at the school door for more than 15 years, checking students’ identification cards.

She said she’d heard every excuse possible--and some impossible ones--as students tried, year after year, to explain away their tardiness or lack of an ID card.

“They’re going to have to get up real early in the morning to beat me,” she told The Times last year.

That wasn’t likely.

Granny, who suffered insomnia, often rose at 2:30 a.m.

Each school day, she made the 80-mile round-trip trek by bus from South Los Angeles to Granada Hills, despite a variety of aches and pains, including heart trouble and diabetes. Still, she missed fewer school days than most of the students who lived around the block.

A time span of more than three generations separated her and the students, which sometimes left her gaping in amazement at their tight jeans and pierced navels.

Although she was required to work only three hours each day, she chose to stay until classes ended.

Lewis came to the job reluctantly.

While her daughter Kim was a student at the school, Lewis would drop her off, and then spend the day waiting in the school parking lot instead of driving back to South Los Angeles only to make the whole trip all over again a few hours later.

One day, the principal noticed her, invited her into the school and asked if she wanted a job.

“At first, she said, ‘no, not really,’ ” said her daughter, Kim Lewis. “She changed her mind, though.”

In the beginning, Lewis was given the name “Granny” as a put-down by students irritated by her voice, which echoed down the school’s hallway and into classrooms and offices. And at first they didn’t realize that the paddle she sometimes chased them with--she called it the “the board of education”--was just a joke.

“They think I’m rude because I raise my voice,” she said last year. “But all the kids love me. They’re not going to miss their teacher, but they’re gonna miss Granny.”

By all appearances, this was true. Even those she yelled at for lacking an ID card smiled at her the next time they came through the door. And at lunchtime, the corner of the hallway where her desk stood was crowded with students, many of them troubled kids who told her things they would never tell their parents, and couldn’t tell their friends.

Even after her children and grandchildren graduated, she stayed on. “She loved those kids,” explained her daughter.

“She was an inspiration,” said the school’s principal, Kathy Rattay. “She was more than a colorful character at the door, she was effective.”

She died dozing on a recliner the school had given her last year as a gift.

The high school plans to place a plaque to commemorate Lewis above her desk at the school’s front door and is also considering organizing a scholarship fund in her name.

The funeral will be Saturday at 9 a.m. at Inglewood Community Mortuary. She is survived by her husband, Lee Lewis, and daughters Kim Lewis and Virginia Todd of Los Angeles, and Buelah Doss of Louisville, Ky.