Celia Ramirez Heil, born in Mexico City in 1930, passed away on January 25, 2022 in Florence, Alabama. While mourning their loss, her family also celebrates that she was a person of many interests and accomplishments who lived a full and interesting life.
Arriving in the United States after her marriage to Fred Heil, who worked for the Tennessee Valley Authority, she began a lifelong avocation in art, exhibiting and selling paintings and sculptures, while raising her two children, Cecilia and Phillip. She gave lectures on her native Mexico and was a volunteer in the emergency room of the former Eliza Coffee Memorial Hospital. She established and managed the Foreign Hospitality Committee that hosted foreign visitors to TVA. After Mrs. Heil made arrangements during a visit from Senator and Mrs. Mansfield to welcome visiting Mexican diplomats to TVA, she later was asked to work for the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee when she moved to Washington, DC, and was responsible for organizing the events to host visiting Mexican diplomats. For more than a decade, she was creative in managing the gift department of a Scandinavian furniture store. While working for the National Science Foundation, she served as administrative support for a team of research scientists at McMurdo Station in Antarctica. She planted a Mexican flag at the geographic South Pole to mark being the first Mexican woman to visit the geographic South Pole. That flag is now on display in a museum in Mexico City. She then worked for the Smithsonian Institution, contributing to operations of the Folk Life Festival each year and gave lectures on her experience in Antarctica.
While working for the National Science Foundation, she earned a degree in Anthropology which enabled her to begin a study of lacquer as an indication of pre-Colombian contact between Asia and the Americas. After publishing articles on her research on lacquer in many journals, and at the age of 83, she published her first book, “Lacquer: Across the Oceans: Independent Invention or Diffusion?” Upon returning to live in Florence, she began work on two children’s books, loved tending to her cat and garden, and enjoyed once again attending her beloved Trinity Episcopal Church.
Mrs. Heil also was well traveled, not only in her native Mexico and parts of the US, but also in Europe and Asia. Her husband’s work took the family to live in Australia for a year, with stopovers in Fiji and New Zealand.
She is survived by her daughter, Cecilia Op de Beke and spouse, Anton, of Falls Church, Virginia, son, Phillip Heil, and spouse, Lian, of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and her treasured grandchildren, Derek, Aubrey, Maya, Julian, Viktor, Oskar, and Robin. She was predeceased by her three sisters, Virginia, Magdalena, and most recently, Dolores Castell of Florence. Her marriage to Fred Heil, now deceased, ended in divorce.
Survivors also include the Chavarria family of Mexico City, the Richardsons of Nashville, the Castell and Williford families of Florence, and family friend, Hilary Gates of Maryland. The family is grateful that in her last years, she was blessed with the caring friendships of Ms. Melissa Tidwell and Professor Emeritus and Reverend Deacon, Thomas Osborne and Mrs. Osborne.
