Alicia Knoll Obituary

Alicia Knoll, Everyone's NanaAlicia Vernon Knoll of Derby, VT, died Sunday, September 3 at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. She was 75. To know her was to love her remarked a close friend at the news of her passing which was a sentiment echoed by friends locally and as far as New Zealand. She was a true lady who meant more to so many than the following words can describe. She was born to humble beginnings in Waycross, GA, the daughter of a mechanic and an artist and she moved to Jacksonville, FL, as a child, which would be her home for 45 years. Her adventurous spirit was on display at an early age when she borrowed her parents' mustang and drove across state lines only to be pulled over by a Georgia police officer who didn't appreciate her sass. She was put in a holding pen to await the local judge but decided to slip out an unlocked window and wait further in the police officer's vacant chair. The judge and cop were none too pleased and thankfully her parents were able to send the large fine via Western Union to secure her release. At 21, she met her future husband, Frank Knoll, who had stopped to use her parents' phone on his way to another date. It was just one of the many lovely and incredible coincidences that marked her life and three months later at the 1969 Apalachicola Oyster Festival she agreed to marry him. At the wedding ceremony in Thomasville, GA, a less than fully sober justice of the peace presided over their nuptials at one point asking an empty courthouse if there were any objections. When her now husband asked the Judge if the ceremony had been legal, he remarked, "well son if this ain't legal then there are a lot of bastards here in Thomas County. " So began Alicia and Frank's love story which lasted over 53 years. Alicia returned to Jacksonville, and she joined her new husband in England while he studied for his Master's degree and where she attended London Polytechnic College. At the completion of their studies, she and Frank joined a fellow graduate student from New Zealand and bicycled across Europe, sleeping in farmer's fields and enjoying the scenery of France, Portugal, and Spain. It began what would be a constant theme in her life-traveling to new places and always making new friends along the way. One of those places was Vermont in the 70s, which charmed them both but was beyond their means at the time. But the seed of attraction for the Green Mountain state was planted. Five years later in Jacksonville, she welcomed her first child, Felix, and four years after that her second son, Garrett. She was made to be a mother. With her husband Frank traveling around the world for work, she took charge in raising the boys and made good friends with their neighbors. Some of the neighborhood kids would stop by her house first to say hi before heading to their homes after school. She, Frank, and the boys continued to travel and find adventures. In the winters, when the boys were old enough, the family started traveling on annual ski trips to Colorado, where her hot pink ski jacket crisscrossed the powdered slopes. In the summers the family would return to Colorado for a few weeks each year, including one trip where her husband was driving perilously close to the edge of an unfenced mountain pass. Terrified, and unsuccessful in getting Frank to drive more safely, Alicia turned to the boys and commanded, "Your Father's lost his mind, get ready to jump. " Back in Jacksonville,