On her 103rd birthday, Julia Greenley sat down at the piano and tried to sing, as she had done all of her life, family members recalled. Months later, on Thursday, Sept. 2, she died of internal bleeding in her Skokie home. Mrs. Greenley emigrated from Poland as a young child with her parents. The family settled in Chicago, said her daughter, Julie Archibald. They struggled financially, with Mrs. Greenley’s father delivering milk from a wagon and her mother tending to 10 children at home. Soon they could not afford to pay for clothes and books, so they sent her to live with an Indiana family for high school. Mrs. Greenley stayed close to that family most of her life, her daughter said. After graduating from high school, she returned to Chicago and worked as a secretary. While performing in a Shakespeare play at a local youth center, she met Casimir Greenley and married him 10 years later in 1930. The couple had two sons and a daughter. They lived in Wilmette from 1939 to 1975, then moved to Skokie. Her husband died of cancer a month before their 50th wedding anniversary. She had a “beautiful operatic voice,” her daughter said. “She always sang in the choir wherever she was.” She sang with church choirs in Indiana as a teen and with St. Joseph Catholic Church in Wilmette for about 25 years. She also is survived by two sons, Bob and Larry; 12 grandchildren; and 15 great-grandchildren. Visitation will be held at 10 a.m. followed by a mass at 11 a.m. Tuesday in St. Joan of Arc Parish, 9248 North Lawndale Ave., Evanston.
