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Honored by two mayors – Lyda Cecelia M. Clarkston Guice dies at 95

Life-long Woodlawn resident Cecelia M. Guice, wife of the late Rev. Edgar Emerson Guice, Sr. and daughter of Lucas and Lyda Clarkston passed away on August 6th at Mercy Hospital.  She was 95 years of age.

Lyda Cecelia Mae Clarkston Guice 2015
Lyda Cecelia Mae Clarkston Guice

Mrs. Guice is best known as the Martin Luther King Center’s business manager, a job from which she retired at the age of 85, after 45 years of service with the City of Chicago Department of Human Services.  Her community advocacy also included local and regional presidencies in the Parent Teacher’s Association, as well as being a long-time member the Parkway Community Center’s Board of Directors. Mrs. Guice has been honored by both Mayor Harold Washington and Mayor Richard H. Daley for her service as a city worker and for her community advocacy.

At the time of her death Mrs. Guice’s was had been an active, long-time member of Woodlawn A.M.E. Church and President of the Woodlawn’s Aeolian Choral.  As a lover of music, in her youth and then in her young adult years she was a member of the James McCosh (now Emmitt Till) School  Rhythm Band and the Imperial Opera Company of the late Gertrude Jackson and Jackson’s daughter the late composer Betty Jackson King.

Cecelia M. Guice, as a member of this country’s greatest generation served in the United States Signal Corps working at Kellogg Electronics as a supervisor inspecting field packs and other equipment used by soldiers during World War II.  Mrs. Guice’s friends and associates include a historic who’s who of Black Chicago including the author Lorraine Hansberry, musician and journalist Barbara Wright-Pryor and Marian Shields Robinson, mother of Michelle Obama.

Cecelia M. Guice is survived by her children Cassandra Cecelia Guice, Edith Dorena Guice-Johnson, Edgar Emerson Guice, Jr., Karen Nina Guice,the Rev. Georgetta Marie-Guice Glover (Pastor of Greater St. Paul A.M.E. Church), and a host of grandchildren, great grandchildren and great-great grandchildren.

Services for Cecelia M. Guice will be held on Friday, August 23, 2019 at Woodlawn A.M.E. Church, 6459 S. Evans, Chicago, IL beginning with the wake at 10 a.m. followed by the funeral at 11 a.m. The interment will be at Lincoln Cemetery.  The Repass will be held at Woodlawn A.M.E. Church following the internment. 

Those wishing to attend the Visitation may do so the evening before the funeral, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at A.R. Leak, 7838 S. Cottage Grove Avenue.

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Mrs. Guice was known as Cecelia.  Her full name was Lyda Cecelia M. Clarkston Guice.

 

 

 

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