Delia Bridges Kilcrease -- Journalist

 

 

Delia Jean Bridges Kilcrease was born on January 4, 1930 in Coweta, Oklahoma, the daughter of Perry Granville and Alta Mae Claxton Bridges.  She was raised in La Mesa, New Mexico, where her parents operated a small business known as the Davis Grocery.  She graduated from Valley High School in Anthony, New Mexico. in 1947 and attended New Mexico State University College of Business in Las Cruces, New Mexico. 

 Della Kilcrease was a former newspaper lifestyles editor and New Mexico State University publications writer.  "As a journalist, she had way of getting wonderful, interesting features out of everyone", said Rita Popp, an NMSU publications writer and former Las Cruces Sun-News lifestyle reporter.  "She was always fascinated with her subjects and had the ability to get people to open up.  She seemed to know everybody in the Mesilla Valley."   Kilcrease worked a reporter and lifestyles editor at the Las Cruces Sun-News from 1972 to 1986.  She then began work as a writer at the NMSU Centennial office until the office closed in December, 1988. "She was really dedicated to the job, and always had a sunny disposition," said Louise Nusbaum, Kilcrease's lifestyles editor and longtime friend. 

Kilcrease won the New Mexico Press Women's Woman of Achievement Award in 1984.  She also won the national Vista award for food writing in 1982.  During her 14 years at the Sun-News, she won numerous other newspaper awards.  She was co-founder of the Las Cruces Head Injury Support Group.  Opal Lee Priestly, former owner of the Sun-News and writer-historian, said Kilcrease was well known in the area because of the many people she encountered as a reporter.  "Della was the kind of writer that wrote an obituary that people would clip out and keep in their wallets because it was written so well," Priestly said.  

On May 10, 1946, Delia married James Glenn Kilcrease, who was born in Nocona, Texas and grew up in El Paso, Texas.  The couple settled in Las Cruces, New Mexico and were the parents of three sons and two daughters, Harold, James, Robert, Karen and Sherri.

Delia died on Tuesday, November 28, 1989 of cancer at the age of 59 at Memorial General Hospital in Las Cruces.  She was buried in the Masonic Cemetery in Las Cruces.  Her husband, James died in 2019 and was also buried in the Masonic Cemetery.

 

Tombstone for Delia and James Kilcrease in the Masonic Cemetery in Las Cruces, NM

LINEAGE:

(Delia Jean Bridges Kilcrease was the daughter of Perry Granville and Alta May Claxton Bridges and the granddaughter of John William “Buck and Nancy Adeline Pugh Bridges.  John William was the fourth child of Orren Dates and Mary Elizabeth Hixon Bridges.  Orren Dates was the first child of William and Mary Thomas Bridges. William was the fourth child of Drury and Charity Cohoon Bridges.  Mary Thomas was the fifth child of James and Mary Standley Thomas.)