Lily devotee E. Woodruff Imberman dies; found paradise in his garden

The rose has been called the Queen of Flowers, but you couldn’t convince Woody Imberman.

He loved an enchantress with many names: Scheherazade, Elusive, Eyeliner, Night Flyer, Anastasia, Tiger Babies, Red Velvet, Rio Negro, Amethyst Temple.

To him, nothing compared to the allure of the tall, sturdy, six-petaled beauty that is the lily.

Mr. Imberman had a serious, professorial air. He smoked a pipe, wore tweed jackets and worked as a management consultant, promoting better employee relations and profitability at major manufacturers including paper mills and TimkenSteel.

But at his home in Winnetka, “He had a backyard full of lilies. The garden was where he lived,” said Sue Augustine, president of the Wisconsin-Illinois Lily Society, a group he helped lead. “It was his holy space.”

Once, he lectured at the Chicago Botanic Garden on “How to Find John Milton’s Lost Paradise in Your Garden with Lilies.”

He gave presentations throughout the Midwest on growing and grooming lilies. He showed off the thousand or so lilies in his yard by opening his home for garden walks. He won many “Best in Show” prizes and was an international judge at flower shows, said his sister Mariah.

To honor his mother, he hybridized — or crossbred — a lily he christened “Jane’s Memory.” According to his son Lane, she was nicknamed “Tiger” for the time she dressed down a group of boys who tromped through her garden.

Because of his father, Lane Imberman said, “I named my daughter Lily.”

Mr. Imberman, who had cancer, died on Nov. 21 at his Winnetka home. He was 77.

Born Elias Woodruff Imberman in Des Moines, he grew up in Hinsdale in the 1940s. His parents Abraham and Jane Imberman, who were from New York City and Baltimore, had a 5-acre farm. “They were Easterners and they were fascinated by the country, the healthfulness of it,” his sister said.

After graduating from Hinsdale Township High School, he worked for the U.S. Geological Survey in northern Idaho. It was the late 1950s. “They saw a lot of bears and he really learned how to swing an ax. He learned how to look at a tree and tell which direction it was going to fall,” said his son.

In 1963, he earned a bachelor’s degree from Illinois Institute of Technology, followed by a master’s and doctorate in history from the University of Chicago. His dissertation was titled “The Formative Years of Chicago Bridge & Iron Company.”

In the early 1960s, he worked as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News, his sister said.

The bulk of his career was at the management consulting firm their father founded, Imberman and DeForest. He wrote hundreds of articles for industrial magazines on labor relations and compensation issues, his sister said. Some appeared in the Harvard Business Review.

But lilies were his passion. Visitors to his garden found “an explosion of color and scent,” said his son.

“He just loved the smell and the shape of the petals and the variations,” his sister said.

“He would really just push himself on the weekends to weed and stake. He could have had some landscapers do some of the menial-type stuff, but he never did,” his son said.

Sometimes, he wondered why his father toiled so hard. “My goodness, all this work for this beautiful flower which is short-lived,” Lane Imberman said, “and work your butt off during the fall, cover the gardens, cut the flowers back.”

But “He just loved it. They were just so beautiful. You would sit in his backyard and it would be perfume.”

When Lane was a boy, Mr. Imberman took him to the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, the Museum of Science and Industry and the Lyric Opera. He coached his football team, was involved in Cubs Scouts and Boy Scouts, and enjoyed whitewater rafting with him. On a trip to Annapolis, they viewed navy ships. They went fossil-hunting in South Dakota.

He’d begun sharing similar adventures with Lily and his other grandchildren, Blake and Olivia.

His marriage to Louise Lane ended in divorce.

Services have been held. His sister said about half — roughly 500 — of Mr. Imberman’s lilies are being relocated to Christ Church in Winnetka, where his ashes are interred, to create a memorial garden.