Lillian Drummond, Tireless Austin Advocate Who Took On Presidents to Protect Low-Income Seniors, Dies at 104 

Lillian Drummond, a West Side community organizer whose quiet persistence and moral authority helped secure utility protections for low-income families and seniors across Illinois, died on Jan. 10. She was 104.

Born Oct. 13, 1921, Drummond lived through more than a century of upheaval and progress, becoming, to those who knew her, a living archive of civic memory and an unassuming force for change. 

A longtime Austin resident, Drummond was instrumental in the creation of the Austin Senior Satellite Center, 5071 W. Congress Pkwy., which was right across the street from her house. She was also a founding member of the South Austin Coalition Community Council. The grassroots organization pressed city, county, state, and federal officials on issues ranging from housing and healthcare to education, public safety, and the environment. Her most enduring work, however, centered on energy affordability — a basic necessity she believed should never be denied to the poor or elderly.

In 1985, she helped organize the Affordable Budget Coalition, which successfully pushed for a 12% Energy Assistance Plan to keep heat and light available to low-income households. Decades later, her advocacy helped lead to the passage of the Percentage of Income Payment Plan, enacted in 2009. The measure allowed qualifying residents to pay only a fixed share of income toward energy bills and remain connected as long as they did so. She also worked to ensure the program’s oversight by the Community and Economic Development Association.

Drummond’s activism was often direct. During a 1994 appearance by President Bill Clinton at Wilbur Wright College, where he promoted an economic plan that included proposed cuts to the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, Ms. Drummond, then 73, pressed to the front after the speech and demanded the president listen. 

“I am Lillian Drummond, the lady who keeps writing to you,” she told him, according to contemporaneous reporting, before making the case for preserving aid for households facing shutoffs.

Those who worked alongside her said she combined gentleness with resolve. She did not raise her voice often; she did not need to. Her presence conveyed both comfort and authority, and her example taught endurance, forgiveness, and faith in what she called God’s timing. 

Public officials repeatedly recognized her work. She received the Edward Bailey Lifetime Community Service Award in 2006, was inducted into the Illinois Senior Citizen Hall of Fame, and was honored with an honorary street designation by the City of Chicago. The Cook County Board of Commissioners passed a resolution praising her as “a beacon of light” whose advocacy reached far beyond her Congress Parkway home and whose relationships across all levels of government helped turn citizen demands into policy.

To her family, Drummond,  affectionately known as Mama Lill, was the matriarch and the glue, a legacy in the flesh whose stories, prayers, and laughter shaped generations. 

“Her life spoke for her,” relatives said. 

Aftercare arrangements were entrusted to Chicagoland Cremation Options of Schiller Park. 

A celebration of life service for Drummomnd will take place on Feb. 12, 10 a.m. to noon, at Friendship M.B. Church, 5200 Jackson Blvd. in Austin. For questions or to donate, please call Janice Henry at (773) 879-6182.