Lillian “Lyl” Wray is a St. Mary’s Seminary Junior College graduate of the 1958 high school class. She was born in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1940 to parents Captain and Mrs. William Wray. Her father was a flight surgeon in the Navy and the senior medical officer at Patuxent River Naval Air Station beginning in 1955.

Lyl completed her freshman year of high school (1954) at New Bern High School in New Bern, North Carolina. Her family moved to Patuxent River, Maryland in 1955, where her father was stationed at the Naval Air Station. She spent one day at St. Mary’s Academy in Leonardtown and one day at the public high school before settling at St. Agnes School, a boarding school, for her sophomore year.

Beginning in 1956, Lyl attended St. Mary’s Seminary as part of the high school program. She was a member of the drama club, was a class officer and was a member of the honor court at one point of her time at the Seminary. She participated in the yearly pageant, portraying Margaret Brent her second year. Lyl also took college courses in the summer at the Seminary. Starting in 1957, Lyl wrote a column for the Lexington Park Enterprise called “Campus Corner”, where she commented and reported on events on campus or related to campus.

Lyl graduated in 1958 and went on to receive a bachelor of arts in speech and dramatic arts with a minor in English at the University of Maryland. She worked in the UMD alumni office raising funds, putting on special events, and writing/editing the newsletter. From there, Lyl was a marketing director for the Naval Institute Press. As of 2008, she is the marketing director for Historic St. Mary’s City.

An oral history of Lillian Wray (with Sarah Sandy (Zanhiser) Yeats) is available on the archive's SlackWater Oral History Collection website: https://smcm.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p4105coll5/id/337/