Carol Lyon White Cuniberti

The daughter of Clara Eickelberg, a first-generation German-American, and Wisconsin-born Charles E. Lyon, often said with a twinkle in her eye that she lived out her dream: “to marry a dashing Californian and leave behind the icy winters of Wisconsin.”

Nevertheless, Carol made dozens of visits back to her home town of Elkhorn during her nearly 100 years, particularly to visit nearby Lake Geneva, which she adored. She remained a fan of the Packers while adding the Dodgers and many tennis players to her idols. She used to say she liked nothing better than to watch TV sports eating chocolate, baking desserts or entertaining her children and grandchildren.

“My mother was amused by Wisconsinites and Angelenos (Los Angeles residents),” said Todd White, her eldest son. “She somehow kept that mid-Western humility, the frankness of her German mother, and always cooked everything with butter. Especially her famous seven-layer chocolate torte with crispy walnuts.”

Carol worked for several years as a secretary for her father’s law office in Elkhorn. Then she took an advertising job in San Francisco, just before settling in the Hollywood Hills with her husband, Dick White, a private pilot and singer who was breaking into the entertainment business.

When her husband was hired as choral director for a one-year tour of the Hollywood musical “John Brown’s Body” in the early 1950s, he asked if there was a role on the road for his new bride. The pretty, platinum blonde was promptly hired as the secretary to lead actor Tyrone Power.

Much later, “after 20 wonderful years with your father, without regrets,” Carol and Dick divorced in the 1970s. Then, after some 30 years of single life, she married a man who as an 11-year-old had summered at Lake Geneva, down the shore path from her family. He was Roberto “Rub” Cuniberti, whose mother hailed from Janesville, Wisc., and father was an Italian immigrant.

When visiting Wisconsin, Carol stayed the same cottage on Lake Geneva her folks bought in 1946, and initially at the family home at 308 North Broad St., visiting friends and many of her 32 first cousins in the area. She managed to keep an equilibrium during her 71 years living in the busy Los Angeles area, where friends often remarked at her good nature, patience and ability to forgive.

Carol said her mother was healed through Christian Science and raised her daughter and son, Jay Forrest Lyon, in the religion, which practices metaphysical healing. She lived according to its precepts, eschewing medicine for the better part of her 98 years. Her first husband, Richard Elliott White, was the son of Irish American mother Julia Christina McElligott, who was brought to the U.S. by her father as an infant, and who later also became a Christian Scientist, also after a healing.

Carol’s brother Jay was a top student at Elkhorn High School and served with the U.S. Army in World War II in the Pacific. Jay was named after their paternal grandfather, Jay Forrest Lyon, who was a Walworth County judge in his hometown of Elkhorn sometime in the early 1900s. Carol remembered he was well liked and that when he passed, the city closed businesses and schools for one day of mourning.

Carol is survived by her children:

-Kimberly White Livezey Call, 68, an artist in Salmon, Idaho;

-Todd Allen White, 67, a financial journalist in Madrid, Spain; and

-Jeffrey Alexander White, 54, an insurance lawyer of West Hills, Calif.

They have, respectively, children Feeya and Skyler Livezey, Darius and Beckett White, and Alison and Lea White.