Lila Hotz Luce Tyng

Lila Ross Hotz was born 26 March 1899 in Chicago to Lila Frances Ross/Hotz and Robert Schuttler Hotz, Sr. She attended Miss Spence’s School in New York City 1914-1918. The mother and daughter were extremely close. “Muddie,” as Lila called her mother, lived with Lila from about 1950 until her death in 1964. Lila’s father died young. When he was on his deathbed in the summer of 1918, the year she graduated from Spence, she came home and enrolled at the Moser school, learning the practical skills of typing and shorthand. After his death on 25 Aug 1918, she slowly stopped writing in the diary she had kept so exuberantly for years, and for three weeks it is blank. After her father’s death, her mother married Frederick T. Haskell.

Lila married Henry Robinson Luce (HRL) on 22 December 1923; they were divorced in September 1935. They had two sons: Henry Luce, b. 28 April 1925, and Peter Paul Luce, b. 18 May 1929. During the marriage HRL was a founder of TIME and Fortune magazines. In 1935 HRL contracted to have a beautiful French-chateau style home built on a large estate in Gladstone, New Jersey. It was named Lu Shan – Chinese for “Luce Mountain” -- at the suggestion of HRL’s father, Henry Winters Luce, (HWL) who, with his wife Elizabeth Root Luce (ERL), spent many years in China. HRL apparently never lived at Lu Shan; he and Clare Boothe Brokaw married in November of 1935.

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