Billie Jayne Halliday

June 23, 1919 to February 10, 2014

Billlie Jayne Halliday, 94, of Mission Hills in San Diego, passed away peacefully in her home, Monday, February 10, 2014.

Billie was born in Detroit, Michigan on June 23, 1919: the first child of Mildred Elizabeth (Meiman) and Herbert Warne Hicks. In July her family moved to Cleveland, which was the hometown of her father’s family, and where Billie grew up and married. At the age of nine, Billie contracted spinal meningitis, which left her totally deaf for the remainder of her life. It was quickly discovered that she was able to read lips - so well, that she was allowed to continue in the Catholic school. And, at one point, she won a state-wide contest in lip-reading. Although she missed a year of school while convalescing from her illness, Billie skipped sixth and eleventh grades. And because she was able to read lips and to speak normally, she never learned sign language. In fact, it was hard for family and friends to think of her as handicapped. She was outgoing and popular in school, enjoyed reading, writing, and playing basketball. Summers were often spent at family camps, where she taught swimming, rowing, and canoeing. She graduated from high school in 1936, and then went on to college at St. Mary of the Woods in Terra Haute, Indiana, majoring in chemistry and participating in the horseback riding club. However, after just one year away, Billie was called home to help take care of her new-born brother Richard – her only sibling. Back in Cleveland, she attended Davis School of (fashion) Design, worked in alterations in Higbee’s Department Store, and did modelling.

In 1925 Billie met Wallace Halliday, the boy next door. She was six and he was five. They were married in Cleveland on February 22, 1941. Billie and Wallace moved their family to Mission Beach, in San Diego, in 1949. In 1955 they moved to Ocean Beach, where they raised their four children. Never did Billie complain of being deaf. In fact, because the topic seldom came up, people often never knew she couldn’t hear. She was a devoted wife and mother. She drove a car, watched TV, taught her children her love of camping, and took them to theatrical events, such as the Starlight Opera.

Billie’s husband Wallace died suddenly in 1975. That year she went to work at the Post Office, from which she retired in 1984. While working, she became the first person in San Diego to have a hearing ear dog, which would wake her for work, let her know when the doorbell rang as well as when the phone rang – for now she had a teletype for the phone. Billie also worked as a volunteer for the Deaf Community Services, where she finally had to learn sign language so that she could communicate in a non-speaking environment. Billie lived in Mission Hills, near family, from 1978 until she died in 2014.

Billie is survived by her daughter Linda and her husband Howard, son Robert and his wife Elaine, daughter Karen and her husband Michael, and son Wallace and his partner Debra Burnett, 15 grandchildren, 25 great-grandchildren, 2 great-great-grandchildren, as well as her brother Richard Hicks and his wife Phyllis.

Visitation: Merkley-Mitchell Mortuary, 3655 5th Avenue, San Diego, CA; Thursday, February 13, 2014; 5:00 – 8:00 PM. Funeral Service: St. Vincent du Paul’s Catholic Church, 4080 Hawk Street, San Diego, CA; Friday, February 14, 2014; 1:30 PM. Interment Following: Glen Abbey Memorial Park, 3838 Bonita Road, Bonita, CA 91902, 3:00 PM. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Deaf Community Services of San Diego, Inc., 1545 Hotel Circle South, Suite 300, San Diego, CA 92108.