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Tearful, final farewells given to former editor

staff photo Kira Lisa Warren

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By Richard O Jones, Staff Writer Updated 1:25 AM Friday, July 30, 2010

HAMILTON — Surrounded by her loved ones and at rest under the protective angel statuary at St. Julie Billiart Church, Kira Lisa Warren made a final appearance in her adopted city Thursday, July 29, for tearful farewells and a celebration of her life.

The Rev. Michael U. Pucke, pastor at St. Julie’s, began the Funeral Liturgy with a moment of silence, and in his homily told the story of a woman who started running for her health, and then decided to take it to the next level. After entering what she thought was a mini-marathon, the woman unexpectedly found herself in the middle of a full-fledged competitive marathon and decided to keep running.

Asked later why she stayed in the race, Pucke said, she replied, “That was not the race I trained for, not the race I entered, but it was the race I was in.”

He compared that woman’s tenacity to Warren’s three-year battle with cancer, which came to an end Friday, July 23, and he quoted from one of the columns she had written pertaining to her illness.

“It was the race she was in,” Pucke said, “and she gave it everything she had.”

Daughter pays tribute to mom’s courage in face of a life-threatening illness

The Rev. Michael U. Pucke called Kira Lisa Warren “a woman of the word,” but not just in a biblical sense.

“She believed that words can make a difference,” he said at Warren’s Funeral Liturgy, Thursday, July 29, at St. Julie Billiart Church. “She believed that words can confront injustice, that words can bring joy and hope.”

Warren’s 22-year-old daughter Julianne Warren-Novick delivered an emotional eulogy, saying “I don’t need to let you know how amazing my mother was because you already know.”

She, too, paid tribute to Warren’s courage in the face of life-threatening illness.

“She did not dwell on how unfair it was,” she said. “She was a remarkable woman who wanted great things for her children … Her opinion will always be what still matters most to me.”

Warren’s husband Philip Novick also spoke briefly to encourage mourners to take away good memories of his wife.

“Our love is eternal,” he said. “Her spirit keeps me grounded and I want everyone to remember something positive.”

Other speakers included longtime friends Lisa Popyk, Larry and Susan Bergman, and Anne Tounge, who knew Warren since they were in the second grade at St. Thomas More Elementary School in Cincinnati.

“A lot of people don’t know that Lisa was poor, that she didn’t have two nickels to rub together,” Tounge said. “In high school, she had a car that had one window that didn’t go up and one window that didn’t go down, but we rode in that car and sang and sang.

“Lisa was a wonderful joy to all of us,” Tounge said, and shared a song that Lisa had written back then, “Honk if You Love Jesus.”

After the memorial service, the funeral proceeded to the Gates of Heaven Catholic Cemetery for a brief Rite of Committal.

Warren joined Cox Media Group as the managing editor of the Hamilton JournalNews in July 2001. She became editor in Hamilton in 2004. She added the title of editor of The Middletown Journal in 2007, and by the time she resigned for health reasons in April 2010, she was editor of Cox Media Group’s entire group of newspapers in Butler and Warren counties, including the Western Star, Pulse-Journal editions, the Oxford Press and Fairfield Echo.

Warren leaves her husband of 27 years, Philip Novick, and two daughters, Julianne and Elizabeth Warren-Novick.

Memorials may be made to the Joe Nuxhall Hope Project, care of the Fairfield Community Foundation, 5350 Pleasant Ave., Fairfield, OH 45014.

Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2188 or rjones@coxohio.com.

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