Hilda Ann Liggett (1935-2018)
Bus driver became transport director
9/17/2018Hilda Ann Liggett of Sylvania, who was known as Ann Liggett, a retired longtime Springfield Local Schools transportation director and past local union president, died Tuesday at her Sylvania home. She was 83.
She died of lung cancer, Sandy Westfall, her daughter, said.
Mrs. Liggett retired from Springfield Local Schools in May after about 30 years of service. She rose through the ranks after she was hired as a bus driver in the late 1970s.
Mrs. Liggett was a past president of Ohio Association of Public School Employees Local 478. She was the local president for about 10 years, from the mid-1980s though the mid-1990s.
“My mother was an amazing woman. Her whole life was devoted to her family, to raising kids,” her daughter said.
“She also was very, very loved by the people she supervised, because as they needed help she was the first one to help them. And as a union leader, they loved her. She was always fair, but she was also the one to tell them if they were wrong,” she added.
Mrs. Liggett was born Sept. 11, 1935, in Toledo to Viola and Simon Norman.
She was raised in Holland, where she attended Springfield High School.
In 1953, she married Bill Liggett.
He died in February.
She was a longtime member of Compelled Church, Temperance, where she ran the young girls’ group and organized numerous dinners.
In her free time, she enjoyed camping with her family and having her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren over for dinner.
“It was amazing. When we had a holiday, there would be 70 to 80 people at her house, and that was just the immediate family,” her daughter said.
Mrs. Liggett was preceded in death by her husband of 65 years, Bill Liggett; and a son, David Schutt.
Surviving are her sons, Albert, Randy, and Nick Liggett; daughters, Sandy Westfall and Barb Farias; sisters, Pete Butler, Jenny Williams, Norma Kleopfer, and Marylou Boehm; 12 foster children, including Michael, Charles, and Harold Yarnell; Jeri Colvin; Ronald Schutt; James Hoffmann, and Marie Lundy; 23 grandchildren, and 34 great-grandchildren.
Funeral services will be at 11 a.m. Monday at Compelled Church, 8790 Jackman Rd.
The family suggests tributes to the church, the Hospice of Northwest Ohio, or U.S. Naval Sea Cadet Corps.
Contact Mike Sigov at sigov@theblade.com, 419-724-6089, or on Twitter @mikesigovblade.