Louise Loveday Luehm Ziluca, 92, of Winchester, VA passed away on Saturday, September 16, 2023 at Westminster Canterbury Shenandoah Valley, Winchester. Louise and her husband Paul lived there for the last 16 years.

In 1931, Louise was born in McKeesport, PA, a former steel mill town 12 miles SE of Pittsburg. Louise’s father, Thomas Tregembo Luehm was a mill clerical worker until the depression when the mill closed. He and his wife, Louise’s mother, Hilder Blid, a former RN at the mill, opened a corner grocery store located across the street from a public elementary school. Their apartment was above the store.

Louise, after public high school, ventured faraway to Radcliff College in Massachusetts. She graduated in 1953 as an anthropologist. It was in that year she married Paul Ziluca, a Harvard graduate who became a career United States Air Force officer, serving 28 years, half of them overseas and all with Louise, except 1 year in Vietnam. During that time, Louise served 5 years as President of the Washington Radcliff Club and President of the Opera Theater of Northern Virginia. She also traveled the globe extensively, visiting remote southern Russia and China when it first opened to foreigners by President Nixon.

As a child, Louise was a member of the Girl Scouts and later in life took on a leadership role as a scout leader and as a fund raiser in their main office in Virginia. She met her very best friend, Mickey Hedberg, working with the Girl Scouts. The two of them went on many adventures, traveling the world visiting every major opera house.

Upon Paul’s retirement, they lived in the Virginia countryside for 27 years with Louise serving as a member of the Virginia Commission of the Arts and a lifelong member of the Upperville Garden Club, winning the Horticulture Tray more times than ever before, by any member.

Louise is preceded in death by her husband Paul who passed away on May 12, 2022.

She is survived by her 4 children, Loveday and her husband, John of Indio, CA, Joseph and his wife, Sue of New York City, NY, Isobel and her husband Danny of Upperville, VA and Maxwell and his wife, Christine of Ellicott City, MD. There are 5 granddaughters, Adrienne (Vishal), Rebecca, Josephine (Andrew) Bianca and Caroline; 3 grandsons, Daniel (Abby), Thomas and Jackson and 2 great-grandchildren, Zoe and Zane.

A memorial service will be held for Louise on Monday, September 25, 2023 at 11am at The Chapel at Shenandoah Valley Westminster Canterbury.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in memory of Louise to the SVWC Foundation for the Arts at svwc.org.